Inheritance
by eiahmon
Summary: AU When Alexander Kesler gets a letter, which claims that she is the only descendant of Alexander of Brennenburg, she is compelled to go investigate. She soon wishes that she hadn't.
1. A Letter

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all; I only wish I did.**

**1.  
>A Letter<strong>

_Dear Ms Kesler,_

_This letter is to inform you that you have been traced as the only remaining descendant of the Freiherr Alexander von der Brennenburg, and as such you have claim on property in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The property has been in the care of a regent since the disappearance of the Freiherr over a century ago, and if it is not claimed, it will become the property of the state and will almost certainly be condemned. _

_We would like to discuss this with you at the earliest possible time, preferably face to face. We would like you to visit our partners in Germany and see the property for yourself. If you need assistance with travel arrangements, we will be glad to offer any help that may be needed. _

_Sinserely,  
>Schuster and Kappal Law Firm<em>

I stared in mute surprise down at the typewritten letter that I held in my hand. Me? Have property? In Germany? I read the letter again, wondering if this was an elaborate prank set up by some of the goofballs I worked with, though it didn't seem like something they would do. The letter was neatly printed on creamy high quality paper, and the letterhead was stamped with the image of a stylized black eagle, holding a wreath of laurels in one claw and a scepter in the other, and surrounded by the words _Suum Cuique_. I didn't have the slightest idea what they meant, but it was obvious a motto of some kind. The envelope was made out of the same paper and addressed to me: Alexandra Kesler, Dante, South Dakota, USA.

I walked back into the house and dropped the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter before sitting down at the table with the letter. I supposed that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that I had property in Germany, since it was obvious from my surname that I was German descent. My however many times great grandparents could have been landowners, and wealthy ones too, if the letter was any indication. Of course that just made me wonder what was going on that they felt the need to leave it all behind and come here. Maybe they had been just one branch of the family, and the rest had stayed behind, and now the branches that stayed had died out?

I didn't know, and it was unlikely that I would get to find out. My family had once been farmers, but a several year long drought during my grandparents' time had put an end to that. The land that comprised the fields had been sold to pay of debt, and they had only kept the house and the outbuildings surrounding it. My parents had had me late in life, so I had only been four when my grandparents died within a month of each other. My parents had died when I was 19. So I had inherited a drafty old farmhouse a few collapsing outbuildings, and the barn that had housed horses and cattle until the 1950's.

Speaking of drafty old farmhouse... I felt the draft that smelled of water and earth blow through the dining room just before the skies opened up and rain began hammering down on the roof. The place was in need of major work: new windows and doors and a new roof to start, but I just didn't have the money. It was a struggle to come up with the money to pay the property taxes every year. A better paying job would have helped out greatly, but that would have required moving to another town, one with a population well over Dante's 84 people, and that would have required leaving the very house I was trying to save.

So needless to say, dropping everything to go to Europe was out of the question, though I was really curious about the property the letter mentioned. Ah well, I thought as I skimmed over the letter one last time, best forget about; it's not like I would ever get to see it. I stood up to throw the letter in the trash when I spotted something that I hadn't noticed before. A telephone number, and I thought of that one sentence in the letter: "If you need assistance with travel arrangements, we will be glad to offer any help that may be needed."

Well, it couldn't hurt to ask, could it?

Since it was nearly six in the afternoon, I figured it was too late to call, since I knew that Germany is several time zones ahead. I put the letter aside, and went about making supper, planning to call the following day.

**OOOOOO**

Real life, unfortunately, got in the way, and it wasn't until nearly a week later, that I was able to pick up the phone. Wincing at the price of an international telephone call, I dialed the number on the letter and listened to it ring. On the fourth ring, it was picked up.

"Hello?" a voice said in heavily accented English, which made me think it strange that a German law firm would answer the phone in English. I also thought it strange that they answered with a casual phone greeting instead of the name of their firm or something.

"Hello? This is Alexandra Kesler. I received a letter from your office last week about some property."

"Oh yes, Ms Kesler!" The voice on the other end sounded oddly relieved. "We were beginning to worry that you weren't going to respond. I am very pleased to be hearing from you."

"What can you tell me about this property?"

"Are you planning to come and visit it?

What the hell? "I can't. I don't have that kind of money, but I am curious about it."

"There is some money tied up in the estate! We would be more than happy to assist you in coming over here!"

Red flags were starting to go up at this man's eagerness. "My family has been farmers for generations. How can a farm family have that kind of property and money in Europe without it being swallowed up by taxes?"

"It is a very large estate. Alexander von der Brennenburg was a Freiherr, or a Baron to use the English term, and while much of it has been lost to taxes and such, a large portion of it still remains."

This Alexander guy must have been loaded for any of it to remain after so long. "So there is enough to get me there and back?"

"Oh yes! There is plenty! Enough for you to easily visit here for a few weeks. There would likely be a bit left over afterwards."

Ka-ching! He had said the magic words. I could use what was left to fix my house! This was sounding better all the time, but I had to make sure.

"Are you absolutely sure you got the right person? Kesler is not exactly an uncommon surname here."

"Our genealogy people did the legwork. I could email you their notes so you can see for yourself, if you like?"

"Yes, please." I gave him my email address.

"We would like you to visit as soon as possible, Ms Kesler. When would be the best time for you?"

"I'd have to arrange for time off work, and I don't know how quickly I could get it."

"With the money left over from the estate, you'll be able to quit your job for a while."

The red flags were going up again with the guy's eagerness to get me over there, but by then my curiosity had gotten the better of me, so I ignored them. I had no intention of quitting my job however, in case things didn't pan out.

We talked for a few more minutes, and I told him that I would speak to my supervisor at work and get back to him. Barely an hour later, the promised email arrived in my inbox, so I sat down at the computer to look it over.

Alexander von der Brennenburg had one child, a son, by a woman named Gisela Schmidt. Gisela died shortly after the birth, and the infant was given over to the care of Jens Bauer, a farmer from the nearby village of Altstadt, and his wife, Hannah. The couple than quietly left the area with their new son. Alexander, apparently, did not object to his son's departure.

There were immigration records of Jens, Hannah, and baby Anselm Bauer arriving in New York in the early spring of 1839. From there the paper trail followed them as they settled in the Manhattan area briefly before packing up and moving to what is now South Dakota. Obscure birth records took over from there, tracing through Anselm, his son, Wilhelm, and then to Wilhelm' son, Gabriel. Gabriel's only child, a daughter that was named Ella, was born in 1902, and in 1919, she married another German immigrant, Hans Kessler, and their son August, my grandfather. was born the following year. Gramps married my grandmother, Mary, in 1936, and he dropped an "s" from his name for no apparent reason. My dad, Mathew Kesler, was born in 1937. The farm went bust in 1952 due to drought, and over the next several months, large parcels of the land were sold. Dad married my mom, Sarah in 1972, when they were 35 and 30 respectively, but it wouldn't be until 1980 that I was born. So all that made me Alexander's great-great-great-great-great granddaughter.

So it seemed that the law people did have the right person. And they really wanted me to come over there. I was curious why Alexander gave up his only child so easily, but I noted that the mother had a different surname. Did that mean that Anselm was illegitimate? That certainly would explain it. I knew enough about nobility to know that having a child out of wedlock was a huge no-no in those days. So Alexander got rid of his son to save his own skin? Well at least he did it the humane way instead of throwing it out into the woods to die or something.

My thoughts were so busy running around in circles over all I had learned that it took me forever to fall asleep that night.

**OOOOOO**

I sat straight up in bed, bathed in cold sweat, gasping for air. I reached out with one shaking hand and turned my bedside lamp on. I'd had the most vivid nightmare of me dragging myself along a cold stone floor, with only the occasional flickering torch for light. I couldn't breathe, and I had been in excruciating pain and acutely aware of my own blood dripping from multiple wounds onto the floor. The entire time I could hear someone shouting, calling my name, demanding that I stop and wait for them, and I knew that doing so would be a massive mistake.

I shuddered and pulled my knees up to my chest. I didn't need that kind of nightmare, (Did anybody, really?) especially when I was seriously considering going to another country. Had the dream been a warning against going?

_Help me_...

I shuddered again and laid back down, leaving the light on. I didn't sleep the rest of the night.

**OOOOOO**

The next day at work, I spoke to the boss, who grudgingly gave me a couple weeks unpaid leave. I winced at the though of not drawing a check for a short while, but I shoved it down. The mysterious German property had me really curious. I would have to work nine straight days before I left, as well as when I came back, to do it though.

The sacrifices one will make...

Not even the thought of financial wreckage could keep the grin off my face that day however. I went through the first part of the day as cheerful as could be, which prompted a few of my coworkers to ask what I was smoking and if they could have some. Of course, Evan, the European history buff among us, just had to pop my balloon.

"Brennenburg?" he asked over lunch. "I've heard of him. Are you sure you want to be related to him?"

I felt my happy place just curl up and die then. "Why?" I asked warily.

"So I guess the people at the law office failed to tell you that he was known as the Vampire of Brennenburg?"

"No way!" I and several others said at the same time.

Evan nodded. "Yes way. Some say he lived for 300 hundred years in his castle, never marrying or having children -"

"That second part's obviously not true." Jason, another coworker, said with a laugh as he slapped me on the back.

Evan nodded in agreement and continued. "The family kept their marriages and birth so secret, that the locals had nothing to do but make the stuff up themselves. We do know that for the 300 or so years that the Brennenburg family ruled over the area, hundreds, maybe thousands, of people vanished in the area around the castle, never to be seen again."

"Oooh spooky!" someone commented in what they probably thought was a creepy voice.

"So what happened?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to know.

Evan shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "Alexander was a member of the Order of the Black Eagle, and several of the other members began whispering how he was the same Alexander that had fought alongside their fathers and grandfathers. That, coupled with the unexplainable disappearances of so many people prompted the Prussian king, Frederick William III, to send his men to either capture Alexander if they could, or kill him if they couldn't."

"And?" I prompted.

"And nothing. When they got there, Alexander was gone, and the castle was falling apart, like something massive had started to tear it down. Villagers reported that a young man from England had come to the castle a couple weeks before, but there was no sign of him either."

Evan grinned, winked at me, and then got up from his chair and left the room.

"Hey!" I called after him "That can't be all of it!"

"All I know!" he called back, and I sat back in my chair, grumbling about being left hanging.

"Better watch out, Lexy." Jason commented "Grandpa vants to suck your blood!"

"What is this?" I groaned "Dracula? And don't call me Lexy."

"Whatever you say, Lexy."

"That's it." I said as I waved my fork at him threateningly. "You're a dead man. Maybe I'll take you with me, introduce you to Grandpa's torture chamber."

Jason cracked up and ran out of the room, and the rest of us laughed as we went back to work.

**OOOOOO**

I called the law firm the following morning before I went to work for the day, and the man I spoke to, the same one I had spoken to before, was very excited to hear that I was coming. He said he arrange for a plane ticket to take me to Germany and a car to take me to Brennenburg once the plane had landed and call me with the details later. Later, he called me on my cell phone at work and gave me the details.

I would fly out from Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City at nine in the morning on August 2nd which would take me to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport in Minnesota. From there I would catch another flight to JFK International Airport in New York. From there it would be a transatlantic flight straight to Berlin. Walther Schuster, whose family had been caring for Brennenburg Castle (Holy hell, I owned a castle!) since Alexander's disappearance would meet me there and drive me the rest of the way.

I hung up the phone and looked up at the calendar. It was July 26th, I had seven days to wait, and I just knew that those seven days were going to be the longest of my life.

If I had known what was coming, I would have never answered the phone that day.


	2. A Journey

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all; I only wish I did.**

**2.  
>A Journey<strong>

I disembarked from my plane at Berlin-Tegel Airport, groggy, tired, and stiff. I half walked, half staggered into the terminal, to see a short, clean shaven, sandy haired man with gray blue eyes, holding a sign that had my name written neatly in big block letters on it. I walked up to him as I slung my carry on over my shoulder and his eyes lit up.

"Ms Kessler?" he asked in a thick German accent, and I nodded, too tired to speak. He must have noticed because he quickly took my bag from me and led me away from the gate to the luggage pick up, where he took my suitcase as well and led me out of the bustling airport. There was a car parked not far from the main entrance and despite how tired I was, I was shocked. I'm no car expert, but the sleek, black 1950's Mercedes-Benz limo waiting screamed _Money!_ to all in sight of it. I was shocked still further when Walther walked right up to it and opened the door for me.

That thing is _mine? _was my only thought as I walked across the sidewalk and stepped in. If Alexander had been missing for nearly a century and a half, where in the hell had the moolah necessary to buy such an expensive car come from? Unless, he really was that damned loaded in life and some of it really was left?

I dozed during the hour and a half long drive to the castle. I had flown from JFK at two in the afternoon, eastern time, and it was a eight and a half hour flight from there to Berlin. It was 6:30am in Berlin, 11:30pm my time.

I hate jet lag.

I forced my eyes open when I felt the car come to a stop and heard Walther open the door. I stepped out and looked up, and my jaw just fell open.

The castle in front of me was massive. I had never before seen such a enormous building. The walls rose up in front of me like sheer cliffs of dark rock, and they were so smooth that they would have been impossible to climb. I heard Walther chuckle behind me at my reaction as he removed my luggage from the trunk, and he walked ahead of me up the stairs to the massive entrance doors. They seemingly opened of their own accord as he reached them, and I hurried up the steps after stepped into the cool shadow of an entrance hall, lined with heavy wooden bookcases on one wall and tall windows on the other. The hall was dimly lit by the sunlight filtering through the grimy windows and from dim electric lights hanging from the ceiling above us. I followed Walther down the hall where it opened up into a large room with a ceiling that was higher than the roof of my house. A doorway on each end let off to places unknown while twin stone staircases rose to an upper landing. A stone inlay of the stylized Black Eagle marked the center of the floor, and behind it was another staircase leading down. I was curious about where it led, but Walther proceeded go up the stairs to the upper level, and I hastened to follow him. At the top of the stairs he immediately turned left for another door and led me down a long corridor. That corridor led to another corridor, which led to a flight of stairs, which led to another corridor. By the time we stopped in front of one of the heavy wooden doors that the castle seemed to be full of I was hopelessly lost. Walther opened the door and carried my luggage inside, and I followed him.

We stepped into the sitting room of a multi room bedroom suite. When most people think of castles, they think stone walls and floors with heavy wooden beams everywhere. While the beams were present, supporting the ceiling above, the floor and ceiling were made up of wooden planks that gleamed in the light from the lamps that were mounted on the paneled walls. Richly woven rugs dotted the floor, and tapestries and portraits covered the walls, and one entire wall was dominated by a large brick fireplace. There was also a heavy wooden desk, and several bookshelves, as well as two doors.

Walther carried my luggage through one of those doors into another room, so I followed him to have a look-see. We stepped into a large bedroom, which had the biggest bed I had ever seen as its centerpiece. There was another fireplace on one wall, flanked by large windows with heavy brocade curtains. A few comfy looking chairs, a clothes cupboard, a tall floor mirror over by the bed and two end tables made up the rest of the room's furniture. There was another door across from the door I had come in, and Walther walked through it and set my luggage down in what was obviously a dressing room of some kind. I curiously stuck my head through the door, to see what was essentially a walk in closet that was about the same size as my room back home. I backed up into the bedroom as Walther straightened up and looked at me.

"I will go and prepare an early lunch for you, if you wish, Ms Kesler." he said, and I nodded faintly. He walked out of the room, and I looked at the bed longingly for a moment. Its fluffy pillows and heavy blankets looked so inviting, but I knew I had to stay away and try to push through the jet lag. I forced myself to leave the bedroom and go back out into the main room, and through the only other door, to find quite a nice bathroom. I grabbed my things needed for hygiene care from my suitcase and spent several minutes freshening up. Feeling somewhat human again, I left the my rooms and stepped out into the hallway.

"Walther?" I called out, only to hear my own voice echoing back to me against the stone walls. He had said he was going to prepare lunch, so he must have disappeared off to the kitchen. I looked in either direction, and saw only a hallway with stone walls, a stone ceiling supported by the same wooden beams that were in my rooms, and a stone floor. There was also tapestries and paintings and rugs, and I remembered hearing back in grade school that such decorations were used to try and hold heat and keep out the cold as much as they were to brighten the place up.

Figuring that since that left had been the direction we had come from, then right was the logical direction to take to find the kitchens, at least I hoped so anyway. It didn't take long before I was lost again and grumbling to myself about how I should have asked for a map or something to help me find my way. I wandered around, hoping that I would either stumble into the kitchen or that Walther would find me, and before long, I began to notice how the castle seemed to be getting.. darker. There were fewer and fewer lights and windows to light the way, and the windows that I did come across showed a storm blocking out the sun as it rolled in, making the place even darker still. I looked around and noted with some uneasiness that the electric lights were old and being so far out in the country, the power wasn't likely the most reliable during bad weather. The thought was borne out by the large numbers of lamps, candles, and the occasional torch that I saw hanging about the place. I needed to find that damned kitchen soon; I had no desire to be lost in the place if the power went out. At precisely the moment that thought crossed my mind, I heard the wind gust outside, and the lights flickered.

Oh that's just great. I really do need to tell my brain to keep its imaginative mouth shut sometimes.

I kept wandering the rooms and corridors, and there were a couple times I heard thunder rumbling through the walls. I could see heavy clouds through the windows and smell rain, so a storm was close. I also could see the thick pine forest that surrounded the castle, and it struck me then how isolated the castle was. Granted I had dozed through the drive from the airport, but I couldn't recall hearing any city sounds once we had left Berlin.

Just how far from civilization was I?

As I wandered down on dreary looking hallway that was lined with curtained windows on one side and a couple doors on the other, I could hear the wind howling through the gaps, and it occurred to me that the place likely needed more work than my house. Drafty old castles _always_ need something.

I walked further down the hallway, and walked through a door into a large room that looked like it was being used to store all sorts of miscellaneous junk. The curtains were closed over the windows, so the only light was from the dim electric lights hanging from the ceiling. I walked into the center of the room, and noted how the room had such good acoustics that I could hear my own breathing plain and loud as day. It didn't dawn on me until I reached the center of the room that I wasn't breathing heavy at all, certainly not enough to be so loud. I stopped in place and looked around, and felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, when I realized that the breathing was coming from somewhere behind me.

"Oh Walther," I said as I turned around "Am I -" I stopped dead in mid sentence.

There was no one there; I was alone in the room.

I spun around in a circle, looking in every which direction, hoping to see Walther behind a crate or box, grinning like the Cheshire Cat at the prank he had just pulled, but I didn't see him, or anyone else for that matter. Right at that second, the wind howled outside, and the lights went out. I stuck my hand in my pocket for my cell phone, so I could use its screen to have a little light, but I fumbled as I pulled it out and dropped in on the stone floor. I heard it bounce off and skid away somewhere. I let out a swear word that would have gotten my mouth washed out if I had said it as a kid and decided to blindly go over to where I thought the windows were and open the curtains. Hopefully I wouldn't kill myself tripping over everything.

But then, the breathing seemed to be coming from in front of me. I skipped back several steps, and then I heard it from behind me too. I yelped and tried to get away from it, but then it seemed like it was coming from all directions, and I was surrounded.

"Shit just got real." I muttered as I tried to think of an escape route and came up empty. There was nowhere to go. The breathing sounds got louder and closer, and it felt as though someone had just cranked the air conditioning on, because it got cold, and I wasn't sure if the shudder that ran through me then was due to the cold or my creepy surroundings. I squeezed my eyes shut, and shuddered again.

A hand came down on my shoulder from behind, and my eyes flew open, and I shrieked as the lights flared back on. I spun around to see Walther standing behind me, eyes wide open in surprise.

"Are you alright, Ms Kesler?" he asked, and I was suddenly gasping for air as the previous warmth returned with a rush as the cold vanished as if it had never been there. The sounds of the breathing were gone, and it was just us in the room that now seemed so brightly lit compared to the total darkness a few seconds ago.

As soon as I had caught by breath, Walter gently took me by the shoulder and led me to the dining room. The heavy oak table was laden with food, and the part of me that had been raised to be frugal screeched in pain at the display, while my stomach decided to let me know, quite loudly, that it had been hours since I had eaten last. Walther pulled out a chair for me, and I gladly sat down and shoved that creepy as hell experience in that room to the back of my mind.

Walther vanished just after I sat down, only appearing again to clear the plates once I was done. He then took me on a tour of the castle. The place was massive and very beautiful in places, but it was in great need of work. It honestly seemed to me that the best thing to do was to cut my losses and let it be condemned. When I said as much to Walther, he became quite frantic and began babbling on how it would be a shame to see a place with such a rich history lost forever.

I raised an eyebrow? "What kind of rich history?"

The man seemed relieved at the question and launched into the tale. Little was known of Brennenburg before it was destroyed by fire in the late 1500s. Not long after the fire, a man named Alexander came from the Rhinelands, claimed the castle as his home, and took over the role as protector of the area. He helped the region to prosper, but very little is known about his family. The family used Alexander as a family name, and the firstborn son was always named such, though they kept their birth, marriage, and death records a closely guarded secret. The heads of the family each joined the Order of the Black Eagle and fought bravely for their king during many battles. The last Alexander of Brennenburg vanished without a trace in 1839, barely two and a half weeks after an Englishman had come to stay at the castle. There was rumors of course about what had happened, but no one knew for sure. The Englishman was also never seen again.

"Did no one look for Alexander, or try to find him?" I asked as we walked through the back hall, a large, open room that was softly lit by the lights high up on the ceiling above. There was a fountain in a recessed alcove, and I noted damage to the stone work, like someone had broken away large pieces of it, though it seemed to be intact. It was a serene place, and I could have spent hours there, though I did find the giant eagle statues a bit unnerving.

"It was a case of relief when he disappeared." Walther explained "There were many dark tales about the castle and the forest around it, and Alexander was believed to be at the heart of many of the strange happenings, so when he disappeared, most were glad that he was gone and didn't bother to search."

A gust of wind shrieked loudly through the hall then, and Walther hurried me out of the hall into the nearest corridor.

By 6:30 in the afternoon, I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, so Walther walked me to my rooms, (after giving me a hastily drawn map of the castle for reference) and bid me good night. I took a quick shower, dried and brushed my hair, brushed my teeth, and dressed for bed. I turned the lights out and was happy to discover that the bed felt every bit as wonderful as it looked. I happily snuggled into the mattress under the blankets with a contented sigh and closed my eyes.

_Foolish child. You should not have come._

The whispered words were the last things I heard before I dropped off to sleep.

**OOOOOO**

An explosion of thunder woke me abruptly. I sat up in bed to see the room illuminated by a flash of lightning for a split second before it went dark again, leaving the outline of the furniture burned into my eyes for a brief moment. I looked around the room for a momen, listening to the rain beating against the windows, as I waited for my heart to slow down to normal after being startled awake, and I couldn't help the strangled scream that escaped when I looked at the floor mirror.

The lightning showed an old man, dressed in a red coat with white hair just past his shoulders was looking at me from the mirror. I scrambled across the bed away from him as I sucked in the breath to scream again. The figure in the mirror then smiled, _actually smiled at me! _and vanished as if it had never been there.

I wasn't able to sleep the rest of the night, and I stayed awake until the storm had passed and the first streaks of dawn lit the sky.


	3. A Discovery

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all; I only wish I did.**

**3.  
>A Discovery<strong>

I was woken in the afternoon by Walther knocking on my door. "Ms. Kesler, are you alright?"

I fumbled for my cell phone that was on the bedside table and looked at the time; nearly three in the afternoon. I hadn't fallen asleep until nearly 8 in the morning after what had seen in the mirror, and I had spent a good chunk of time trying to convince myself it had all been a dream.

Walther knocked again. "Ms. Kesler?"

"I'm alright." I called back as I sat up. My eyes were full of sand, and I could feel the headache that was clawing at my temples. It wasn't going to be a good day, I just knew it.

"Would you like to have an early dinner or maybe a late lunch, Ms. Kesler?"

"That would be fine, Walther." I responded, not caring one way or another. My only concern was popping some pain pills and dragging my throbbing head into the shower, along with the rest of me.

"As you wish, Ms. Kesler." Walther said, and I heard him walking away. I groaned and flopped back down for a moment, before I figured that I had better get up. I threw the blankets back and dragged myself to the closet to get to my suitcase. The thought occurred to me as I opened it that I had better unpack later. I dug around until I found the clothes that I wanted as well as my small bottle of aspirin. I dry swallowed a couple tablets on the spot and then hauled myself to the bathroom.

A quick scrub down in the shower did wonders for my mood, which only improved even more as the aspirin kicked in and my headache melted away. Once I was dried, dressed, and feeling human again, I had almost forgotten about my experiences the day before. I picked up the map that Walther had given me, and as I turned to leave the room, I glanced back into the bedroom to see my cell phone lying on the end table and suddenly felt chilled.

Because I had lost it in that room the previous day, and it hadn't been on the night stand when I had gone to bed.

I shivered hard and left the room at just below a run.

**OOOOOO**

After I had eaten, Walther informed me that he needed to go into the nearby village of Altstadt to pick up a few things. I was about to ask if I could accompany him when he said that the weather was supposed to turn sour soon, so he would go alone. I was curious about the village, but since, as a lifelong resident of Tornado Alley, I was fully aware the threat that severe weather carried. I simply nodded in understanding and asked him to be careful. He gave me a smile and said that he would be back in a few hours.

"Walther?" I asked as he was turning to leave the room "Is this castle... haunted by chance?"

Walther paused for an endless moment, and then he turned and walked back to the table, where I was still sitting. He pulled up a chair beside me and looked me in the eye.

"Yes," he said simply "but you mustn't let them frighten you. They are harmless, and scaring visitors to the castle is apparently how they entertain themselves. Have you experienced something already?"

I told him of what had happened in the storage room, but I didn't mention my phone's reappearance. That was just too weird to explain, even though I had seen it with my own eyes. I also told him of the old man that had appeared in my bedroom the previous night.

"An old man, you say?" Walther asked "Can you describe him?"

"I didn't see him too well, but he had white hair just past his shoulders, and he was wearing a red jacket or coat that seemed to go past his waist. After that, I can't tell you." As I spoke, I noticed Walther getting paler and paler, and when I finished, he just stared at me silently for a moment as I resisted the urge to squirm under his gaze.

"Walther?" I asked hesitantly "How did this place come to be haunted?" I'd had encounters with a few haunted houses in my life, including one that had become so after a murder suicide had taken place in its walls, so I really wanted to know how my castle came to be inhabited by ghosts.

He blinked and shook his head. "This castle's history is a bit... dark, if you will, Ms. Kesler. Many people disappeared in this area without a trace, and the last Alexander was believed to be responsible for many atrocities, though no one was able to prove it." A cold blast of air roared through the dining room them, rattling the chains of the lights hanging from the ceiling above. I shivered, and Walther's eyes darted back and forth for a moment before he refocused on me. "Some insist that that is why Alexander vanished; he fled before the king's men could reach him and see him punished for his crimes."

"And the Englishman?" I asked nervously.

"He vanished as well. No one was able to find him, and if it hadn't been for the fact that villagers in Altstadt saw him arrive in town and watched him depart for the castle, it would have been impossible to tell that he had been here at all."

"With Alexander gone, why wasn't the property auctioned off or something?" I asked "Surely someone would have wanted it and claimed lordship over the region."

"No one wanted to be associated with the Vampire of Brennenburg. My family was appointed to care for the castle, and we have lived here ever since." He stood up from his chair. "And now, I must head into the village. I hope to be back for the storm, but if it breaks, I will stay in the village to wait it out. If the electricity fails, use the candles and torches. There are oil lamps around as well, and if you are curious about the history of the castle, there are books and manuscripts in the Archives. Your map will show you how to get there from here. I will return as soon as I can."

I walked with him to the Entrance Hall and watched from the massive front steps as he climbed into a smaller, newer car - a silver Mercedes-Benz B Class - for the drive to the village. As he drove away, I walked back inside and closes the doors, surprised at how easy they were to move despite their size. I then pulled my map out of my pocket and looked at it for the location of the Archives. My map led me to the second level of the entrance hall and right, down a short corridor, though a fancy red metal door, into the Archives. My map was just a general layout of the castle, so it took me a bit of wandering to find the Recent History room, which had the books I was looking for. It took me even longer to find one that I could read, since just about everything was in German, and I had taken French in high school instead. To my luck, I was able to find a book written by a French visitor to the area, and though the language was a bit archaic compared to what I had learned, I was still able to read and understand it. I found a comfy chair outside the room, and after lighting the nearby lamp, I settled down to read.

Soon I was lost in tales of the Immortal Baron (Alexander, one of them anyway) and the tales of the mysterious Gatherers. believed to the be deserters from the Thirty Years' War that were forever damned to roam the forests. Horribly mutated by their taint (Only in Europe can abandoning your post get you cursed for eternity.) they stalk the forest around the castle, dragging burlap sacks behind them. The shy away from people for the most part, but they had captured people, as well as animals, stuffed them in their sack, and hauled them off to who knows where, never to be seen again. After the last Alexander disappeared, the Gatherers also mysteriously vanished, which to many was the final proof that he had been responsible for the loss of so many people.

A distant rumble of thunder made me look up from the book, and a few seconds later, a flash of lightning outside the sole window in a little private study off the main room let me know that another storm was rolling in. I put the book back on the shelf and returned to my room to begin unpacking. As I walked through the castle, I noted the many tinderboxes lying about, which confirmed my earlier suspicion that the power wasn't reliable. Thankfully, the power back home wasn't reliable during bad weather either, so I knew how to use the damn things to light fire, candles, and oil lamps, though I preferred the simplicity of a box of matches. I had often wondered why my parents and grandparents had kept them around, but I was grateful for that now, since I had a sinking feeling that there were few, if any, matches in the castle.

A half hour or so later, once I had everything put away, my stomach began to rumble, and I looked at my cell phone to see that nearly five hours had gone by since I had eaten last. Taking up my map, I wandered off in search of the kitchen and a quick snack. I found it quickly, and it was a fairly modern kitchen, though the appliances looked a couple decades old. Everything was electric, so I figured I had better grab something fast. There was a large stone fireplace against one wall, with the hook and spit necessary for cooking over an open fire, and many camping trips with my dad as a kid had ensured I could cook that way, but I preferred using just a regular stove. I rummaged in the cabinets and fridge , noticing as I did so that there were no signs of the massive feast that Walther had made the day of my arrival, and made myself a bowl of soup and a sandwich, which I then ate at the simple wooden table in the center of the room. As I was washing up afterward, the lights flickered, and I could hear the wind roaring outside.

"I hope Walther made it back." I said to myself as I finished washing my dishes and dried my hands on a nearby towel. I had no desire to stay in the castle alone during a power outage. By then it was nearly 9pm, and I was still tired from my sleepless night, so I opted to go back to my room and hit the sack. The power flickered again, so to be safe, I grabbed an oil lamp that was seated on a nearby countertop, and after making sure the wick was trimmed, the vents were clear, and that the reservoir was filled and ready, I used a tinderbox that had been sitting next to it to light it. Once it was going, I put the chimney back on and adjusted the wick to get the desired brightness. It wasn't bright enough to read by, but it was more than enough light to get me back to my rooms in case the power failed. I just had to make sure not to drop it or bad things could happen.

Picking up the lamp by its conveniently shaped reservoir, I made sure to grab the tinderbox as well and stuff it in a pocket, and then I walked out of the kitchen, once again using my map to get where I needed to go. I had barely made it out of the kitchen, when the power flickered again, and a second later, a blinding flash of lightning that was a accompanied by a deafening roar of thunder plunged the castle into darkness as the power failed. I stood still for a second while I waited for my eyes to adjust, and then I continued on my way, holding my map close to the lamp so I could see it. I couldn't see it very well, but it was enough to get me back to my rooms in short order. I put the map down on the desk in the main room and went to the bathroom to take care of a few things and change into my night clothes. Once that was done, I went back to the bedroom, set the lamp down on the nightstand, blew it out, and climbed into bed. My last though before falling asleep was that I hoped that I wouldn't have any more nightly visitors.

**OOOOOO**

_Wake up, Alexandra!_

The loud voice startled me from a deep sleep, and I sat straight up in bed. Two things became apparent to me quickly: one, the storm was still raging outside, and two: something was moving around in the main room. The bedroom door, which I had left open when I had gone to bed, was now closed, and I could hear something shuffling around on the other side.

"Walther?" I called out uncertainly, and my call was answered by the strangest sounding growl I had ever heard, followed by something body slamming the wooden door in an attempt to get in.

_You must hide! Now!_

I didn't know where the voice was coming from, but it didn't have to tell me twice. As the whatever it was slammed against the door a second time, I dove off the bed and shimmied on my stomach under it. I was thankful that it was such a large bed as I tried to lay on the floor exactly in the middle, so I would hopefully not be seen from either side. I heard the door being slammed into a third time, and then, on the fourth time, I heard it splinter into pieces, followed by that strange, terrifying growl. I could hear my blood roaring through my ears and feel my heart pounding, and I hoped that whatever was in the room with me wouldn't hear it either, as I held my breath as the unknown thing came into the room.

I could hear its feet on the wood floor, and a flash of lightning allowed me to get a brief glimpse of them, which forced me to clamp my hand over my mouth to stop the scream that wanted to come out. The toes looked human, and from what I could see that wasn't covered by the bandages, the feet appeared human as well, but that is where the similarities ended. The bandages ended at just above the ankle, and the height of the bed allowed me to see that entire chunks of skin and muscle were missing above those, allowing the bone to be plainly visible. Above that, a rough patchwork of stitches held other part of the skin closed, though whoever had done it had done a seriously half-assed job. Its shuffling gait was also nothing like I had seen a human walk with, even a disabled one.

The creature shuffled around the bed, making all sorts of strange noises, which forced me to swallow a whimper lest it hear me when it stopped only a couple feet from my face. I could smell decay and rot, yet strangely, under that, I could detect a slight hint of spiced wine. Despite my circumstances, hiding under my bed from who knows what, I was able to think how strange that was and actually had to resist the urge to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it all.

A second later, I was abruptly yanked back to reality when the thing began to make some kind of sound; it sounded like it was trying to hack up a hair ball to be honest, and then it began to walk away. I tracked its shuffling footsteps as it walked back into the main room, and then I heard the door to the hallway open and shut. I released the breath that I had been holding, but I still didn't move from under the bed for the next several minutes. I had visions of it waiting in the other room, waiting for me to creep out, and I wanted to give it a chance to get good and gone before I budged an inch.

When I finally gathered the courage to pull myself out of my hiding place, I cautiously crept out of the bedroom into the main room, using the by then nearly continuous lightning to see. The main room was empty, and I carefully made my way over to the bathroom to check it as well. The door was shut, and I spent a few minutes working up the nerve before I reached out with one shaking hand and touched the knob. I turned it but didn't pull the door open, and when I didn't hear anything on the side, I slowly pulled it open. The bathroom was also empty, and I allowed myself to let out a sigh of relief.

_Run! Flee! Get out of the castle!_

I tried to ignore the voice, which I could tell was a man's, and ran back to the bedroom. Still using the lightning for light, I hurriedly dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and a flannel, before I hastily pulled my socks and shoes on. I stuffed my cell phone in one pocket and stuffed my house keys in the other. I left the rest of my luggage. My only concern was getting out of the castle and to the nearest town. Then I could worry about getting home. A quick check on the nearest light switch confirmed that the power was still out, which while disappointing, wasn't surprising, so I grabbed the tinderbox and lamp and cautiously crept to the door that led into the hallway. I also made sure to grab the map on the way.

I eased the door open and peeked my head out. Seeing nothing, I lit the lamp and ventured out into the dark corridors. My nerves were in shattered pieces by then, and the hand holding the lantern shook as I practically tip toed down the hallway, trying to stick to the shadows, so that a stray lightning flash wouldn't light me up for everything to see. It didn't help that every time my eyes would adjust to the dim light of the lamp, a flash of lightning would destroy my night vision, which forced my eyes to adjust all over again. I held the lamp to my side to help that a bit, and I scarcely dared to breath as I made my way back to the entrance hall.

A tense ten minutes later, I extinguished the lamp, so it wouldn't announce my presence to anything, and carefully pushed open the door that led to the entrance hall. The hinges creaked loudly in the large room, and I ran back to the a large wardrobe that had randomly sitting there and climbed inside and shut the doors in case anything had heard that. I tried to control my wheezing breath while I waited, and after several minutes, I decided that it was as safe as it was going to get and crept out of the wardrobe and back to the door. There were only a few small windows in the large two story room, so lightning did not illuminate it well enough to tell if there was anything in there. I decided to just go for it, and I ran hell bent for election down the stairs and into the short hallway that led to the front doors. All the while the lightning and thunder kept up a constant assault, making it impossible to see and hear at times.

I yanked the front doors open and ran through the freezing downpour and howling wind down the steps to find an unpleasant surprise.

The limo that Walther had picked me up from the airport in, and which had been parked there earlier in the day, was gone. So was Walther's other car. I stood at the bottom of the steps and felt my hope for escape wither and die. With such a violent storm, going out into the forest was a dangerous prospect, and the chances of getting struck, directly or indirectly, by lightning, was high.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of that all too familiar growl behind me in the entrance hall, and I ran around the steps and huddled down on the ground where they met the castle wall. No sooner had I done that, than the front door slammed shut. I was already soaked by the rain, and I realized that, if I were to stay outside, the weather would see me dead of hypothermia before sunrise. I had to go back inside.

Why had Tornado Season, with its temperature plummeting supercell thunderstorms, decided to follow me to Germany of all places?

I huddled against the steps - thankfully I was on the leeward side - soaked and shivering and weighed my chances. On one hand, I could brave the storm, try to find a town, and likely ending up freezing to death on the road, if the lightning didn't get me first, or I could go back inside where it was warm and dry and maybe find a place to hide until dawn. There was a chance that I could run across whatever had been in my bedroom, but hopefully, it was the only one, and with the castle being so large, it would hopefully be easy to avoid it. I thought about briefly calling for help, but I didn't know any emergency numbers for the area, and I knew that it was unlikely that I would have cell phone signal in such weather anyway.

Decision made, I hauled myself to my feet and walked up the steps, towards the front doors.


	4. An Escape

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all; I only wish I did. **

**4.  
>An Escape<strong>

As I forced myself to walk up the steps, I was glad that the loudness of the storm covered the sounds of my footsteps, even as I knew that it also made it impossible for me to tell if something was waiting for me on the other side of the doors. My hands were shaking like an earthquake as I reached out to push the door open. A brilliant flash of lightning made it impossible to see through the gloom in the entrance hall. Holding my breath, I stepped into the entrance hall and closed the door as quietly as possible behind me. I then ducked over by a bookshelf and pressed myself against the wall, while I waited to see if anything appeared. When nothing did, I cautiously crept down the hall into the main part of the hall proper. I lit my lamp and took out my map, but to my frustration, the map was smeared and smudged from the rain and thus unreadable.

I could remember where a few things were from Walther's tour earlier, so I knew that the wine cellar and a small laboratory was off to my left, and the old archives were off to my right. Upstairs to the right were the main archives that I had read that book in earlier. Upstairs to the left, of course, were the halls that led to the rest of the castle. I really did not want to go back down those corridors, since so many their turns were blind with rooms that things could pop out of me at. The wine cellar and the laboratory were out; they were just large open rooms with no good hiding places. The old archives weren't good for hiding either, but I knew that they led to another hall that led to the center courtyard. The courtyard of course was no good for hiding in this weather, but the hall that led to it had many small rooms, almost all of which had lockable doors. It sounded like to place to be to me, so I headed in that direction.

I went down a short hallway to one of those heavy metal doors that seemed to mark the different areas of the castle, but as soon as I touched the handle, I heard that damned growling from the other side. I began to back away as whatever began to body slam the door; I didn't know if it could get through that metal door, but I had no wish to be anywhere near if it did. The thing slammed against the door a second time, and I heard the distinct sound of metal bending, so I turned and ran back out into the hall. About halfway across, I made a split second decision and ran down the steps across from the front doors and through a heavy oak door. I ran down another short hallway, before I came across another heavy metal door. Without stopping to think, I pulled it open, ran through, and slammed it behind me. I hoped that, since I hadn't heard the monster thing come through the door to the old archives that it hadn't seen me run through to where I was.

I huddled in the corner for a moment to catch my breath and let my heart slow down, and once I was sure that thing wasn't going to come after me, I stood up and used my lamp to look around. I was in a long hallway, which I knew right away hadn't been on my map, with timbered walls and ceiling and a dirt covered stone floor. Lamps hung at regular intervals from the timbers that supported the ceiling, but like the rest of the electric lights, they were cold and dark. I walked as quietly as I could down the hall, noting that in places the walls had collapsed, allowing rocks and dirt to pile up along the sides. The hall turned right, and then left, and then left again before opening out into a large, high ceilinged room. Enormous wooden casks sat on racks on the floor, and windows all the way up near the ceiling let in the lightning. As I walked through, listening for anything unfriendly that might have been in there with me, I spotted torches dotting the walls, but no electric lights, so I couldn't test to see if the power had come back on yet. I doubted that it had - spending my entire life in the country had taught me that rural areas are the last ones to get power restored after an outage - but I still wanted to check. The lamp was nice to have, but if I accidentally dropped it...

I walked through a doorway into another room the same size as the previous one, but this time, I spotted a door on the left wall. I eased it open and used the lamp light to peek around inside. Seeing nothing, but a couple wine racks and a small table with a stub of a candle, I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I raised my lamp high to look around and spotted a small jar sitting on the lower shelf of one of the wine racks. I picked it up and discovered it was lamp oil. I still had plenty of oil left in the reservoir, but a little extra never hurt, so I slipped the small bottle in a pocket. My pockets were feeling a little crowded with the phone, tinderbox, and now the jar of oil that were occupying them, so I was going to have to find some other way of carrying my things.

Seeing another door on the right, I went through it. That led to a small series of little rooms, which eventually ended in two places. One door took me back out into the large room that I had come from. A second one led me into a room with a trapdoor on the floor by the far wall and shelves of boxes and crates. I also found an ancient looking oil can, sitting on its stand in one corner, but it was heavily corroded and whatever oil it had once held was long gone. I wandered through the room for a few minutes before I planted myself at a long table that was in one of them. I used the lamp's wick to light a couple of candles that were on the table and then blew the lamp out.

I hoped I was safe for the night, as this place had not been on my map, nor had it been part of the tour that Walther had taken me on. I did not want to wander around with no idea of where I was going. It could have led to that torture chamber that I had jokingly threatened Jason with back home. I put my head down on the table. Damn, I wish I had just stayed home! Instead of being at work, joking with my coworkers, or at home curled up with a good book in front of the fireplace, I was stuck here with something out to get me. If that thing I had encountered was capable of damaging a metal door, then it could easily tear me to pieces. I wanted to go back to sleep, and hopefully, when I woke up, the entire night would have turned out to be a nightmare, but I didn't dare. I was in an unsecured location where someone or something could stumble upon me at any moment. I had to stay awake.

According to my cell phone, I had sat and waited at the table for just over an hour when I heard shuffling footsteps in the previous room. I had closed the door to that room, but I knew it was time to move anyway. I quietly stood up from the chair, picked up my lamp, and blew out the candles. I then walked through the door at the opposite end of the room and shut it behind me as well. A lone candle supplied just enough light for me to see by, which was a good thing, because when I shut the door, it latched with a loud _clack! _that echoed in the small room. Immediately a growl sounded two rooms back, and I heard whatever busting down the door. Going back to the entrance hall was not an option - I didn't know if the thing behind me was the same one that had tried to come through from the old archives or a different one, so instead I ran into the room with the trap door and piled crates and everything else I could find in front of the door. I even dragged an empty shelf over for good measure. I then frantically, with my heart pounding in my chest and my breath gasping, turned the wooden crank to raise the trapdoor as the thing pounded against the barricade I had made from the other side. I ran across the room just as the door splintered apart. I heard it growl as it spotted me, and I spared a glance over my shoulder to see what was chasing me. All I caught of a glimpse of was a misshapen head with a gaping maw for a mouth before it swung one arm and casually knocked my barricade away. I shrieked in terror and dove through the trap door as I heard its feet slapping against the floor as it ran after me. Torches on the wall allowed me to see where I was going as I ran down a corridor and through another metal door.

This time, I didn't stop running. I sprinted down a hallway, barely noticing the doorway that led into a room full of what looked like bookshelves. As the thing began to break down the door behind me, I ran through another doorway, past several bookshelves, and ran into a dead end. I frantically tried to find a door or something when I heard the screeching of tearing metal followed by the crash of the door as it fell to the floor. I turned around for a moment and heard it coming after me, so going back out into the hall was most definitely not an option. Instead I went to the left and dove in the narrow space between two bookshelves where they met in the corner. I carefully pulled a box over in front of me and huddled down.

I tried to slow my gasping breath as I heard its feet slapping against the floor, and then I heard it slow to a walk. A hissing growl echoed off the walls, and I realized that it was in the room with me. I had to grab the lamp with both hands and shove it down between my folded legs when I started to shake so hard that the chimney started to rattle ever so slightly. It seemed to me that the thing's hearing was fairly sensitive, and I did not want to give away any clue as to where I was. I looked up at the wall that I had just been standing in front of, and could see its shadow, especially that of its deformed left hand with a set of lethal looking Freddy Kruger claws. The shadow grew in size as it moved closer, and I forced my eyes closed when it was standing right next to the bookshelf that I was crouched by.

_Please let it walk away! Please don't let it turn this way! If it sees me, I'm dead! Please, please, please...!_

I heard it make another hissing growl, and after an endless moment, I heard it begin to walk away. I kept my eyes screwed shut and kept a tight grip on my lamp, and shortly thereafter I heard the welcome sound of the metal pieces of the door to the area being walked over as the thing left the area. I allowed myself a quiet sigh of relief, but like before, I did not move from my hiding spot for the next several minutes.

When I finally felt safe enough to venture out, I walked back out into the hallway and got my first look at the destroyed door. It lay as a twisted piece of unrecognizable wreckage of the floor. The remains of the hinges had been torn clear out of the wall. I didn't get any closer. Instead I relit my lamp using the tinderbox, and proceeded left, down the hallway. It turned left again and through a doorway that had the rusted remains of a metal gate lying nearby. The corridor widened into a large room with large columns supporting the ceiling, and it was then that I noticed signs of old water damage along the walls. I was far enough underground that I could no longer hear the storm, so I simply figured that the place had flooded like any other basement and moved on.

_The Shadow..._

I ignored the return of the voice and moved to the left wall, where there was another gate. It was down, and when I tried the rusted crank nearby, it wouldn't budge; corrosion had frozen it. I stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what to do, before I remembered the lamp oil in my pocket. I sat the lamp down on a nearby crate and fished the small jar of oil out of my pocket. I knew that it was likely kerosene instead of true oil, since that is what most so called oil lamps actually burn, but it was worth a shot. Going back the way I came was not going to happen any time soon if I had my way. Carefully unscrewing the cap, I poured a bit of the oil - and it was real oil, not kerosene - onto the frozen crank. Putting the lid back on the jar and stuffing it back in my pocket, I grabbed the crank with both hands and gave it a yank. It didn't want to turn at first, but I kept trying and after a few minutes, I felt it give ever so slightly.

Bolstered by this small success, I kept trying, and eventually with a grating screech, the crank began to turn. I winced at the sound but otherwise paid it no mind as the gate slowly began to rise. Grinning like an idiot, I had the gate raised about halfway when I heard the dreaded growl back where I had come from. The noise had attracted my little friend. Deciding that the gate was high enough, I snatched up the lamp and dropped to my stomach. I shimmied under the partially raised gate just as I heard the running footsteps on the floor behind me. Once on the other side, I stood up just as the thing rushed the gate. I backed away in horror as I watched it slam at the gate. It was like something about of a horror game; a terrifying cross between demon and human. I continued to stare even as the gate began to buckle under the assault.

_Run foolish child! Run!_

I turned and fled through another doorway just as the gate crashed down behind me, followed by the sound of it running towards me. Screaming in terror, I reached yet another metal door, pulled it open, and ran through it, feeling the swipe of that thing's claws only inches from my back. I yanked the door shut and found myself in yet another short L shaped hallway. As the creature began to break the door down behind me, I ran down this hall and through the door at the end. This only led me to yet another hallway, which I ran for my life down just as I heard the metal door burst open. A second later, I heard it pounding on the wooden door that I had just closed, and I knew that it wouldn't last near as long as the metal one had. That was proven correct when I heard the wooden door fall apart barely a few seconds later.

I didn't know how fast the thing could run, and I hoped that it was slower than me as I ran down the corridor and through another door. The door again led to a corridor that was empty of anything but a pile of debris in the middle of it, which I had to climb over. This slowed me down and allowed the thing behind me to catch up. I heard it break down the door I had just come through as I jumped over the last of the debris and took off running again. Behind me, it snarled and knocked the debris out of it's path. I reached a door that was in the middle of a wall and went through it and slammed it behind me as the thing rammed into it from the other side. I couldn't help the shriek that escaped my lips as I continued to run. By then, my lungs and legs were on fire, and I could feel a painful stitch in my side. I couldn't keep running for much longer, but then hope arrived in the form of another metal door. It would buy me enough time to hopefully find a place to hide and catch my breath. I reached out for it and freaked out when it refused to budge. I heard the thing gaining on me as I frantically tugged at the handle.

_It opens the other way, child!_

Heeding the voice that hadn't steered me wrong yet, I pushed against the door, and grinned in triumph, despite my circumstances, as it swung open. The grin abruptly turned into an anguished howl when I felt fire erupt across my back as the thing nailed me with its claws. Adrenaline allowed me to get through the door, but the monster came through before I could shut it. I staggered just ahead of it and managed to make it up the first few steps of a staircase before I collapsed, too exhausted to keep going. I closed my eyes and waited for the end.

Behind me, I heard an angry buzzing, like an entire hive of angry bees were congregating behind me, followed by a -

_You shall not harm my child!_

- bright flash of light that was even brighter than the lightning that I had seen earlier. I turned around just in time to see the creature blow apart, like someone had stuck a few dozen M80s in its body. Pieces of it flew everywhere, though, strangely, none landed on me.

_It's safe now._

That rich baritone was the last thing I heard as I passed out cold on the steps.


	5. An Answer

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all: I only wish I did. **

**5.  
>An Answer<strong>

I groaned as I came around. The first thing that I was aware of was the rumble of the thunder outside, which was followed by the sound of my breathing. Immediately following that, I felt the deep throbbing of my back, and I vaguely remembered that that thing had raked me with its claws. I groaned again and looked around to find myself still lying on the bottom of the stairs where I had collapsed. I slowly and shakily sat up, wincing as the movement pulled on what felt to be shallow cuts across my middle back. I could also feel my hair sticking to what had to be dried blood and feel a breeze through large tears in my shirts. I looked back at the door and saw only the feet of the thing sitting on the floor where it had been standing. The rest of it was scattered all over the walls of the staircase and the low ceiling over the doorway. I didn't know what had killed it, but I was grateful to whatever it was.

I hauled myself to my feet and managed to pull myself up the stairs, and I emerged into the Back Hall that Walther had taken me through earlier. I felt the peace of the place wash over me, and I figured that if any place in the castle was safe, then this was it. I had always found the sound of falling water soothing, so I carefully sat down by the fountain and rested for a bit. I took my cell phone out to see that I had been out for approximately an hour, and that it was now 2:15 in the morning. The storm was still going outside, but not as violently as it had been before. I looked over my lamp and made sure that it had not been damaged when I fell earlier, and I was relieved to see that it appeared to be fine, so I lit it and set it on the floor beside me. The light danced off the water in the fountain, and I allowed myself a small smile of contentment. I was in a relatively safe area, and the thing that had been chasing me was gone.

_There are more._

And then that contentment vanished in as instant. More? There were more of those abominations? That's just great...

With that knowledge, I figured that finding a better place to hang out than the wide open space of the back hall was a great idea, so I got back on my feet and looked around. There were six doors out of the hall; the one I had come from, one on my left that Walther said led down into the storage area, and four on an upper landing accessed by twin curving staircases. The doors at each end led to the rest of the castle, while the two in the middle led to a guest room and a study respectively, if I remembered Walther's words right. The guest room seemed like a good place to start, so up the stairs I went. I pushed open the door and stepped into a three room suite very similar to the rooms that I had been occupying. The room was neat, but covered by a layer of dust, which hinted that it hadn't occupied in quite a long time. The main room was smaller than mine, and had a desk under a window, and dresser, a couple of bookshelves, and a small fireplace To the right was a small dressing room with two wardrobes and two dressers, and to the right was the bedroom. I wandered in there and used my lamp to light a second lamp that was on the nightstand by the bed before I took a look around.

The bedroom also sported a wardrobe, so I figured that was a decent place to hide if necessary, and since hiding under the bed had worked once before, I could do it again - if I could keep myself from having a sneezing fit from all the dust. I checked the wardrobe to find it empty of clothes and spiders and having more than enough room or me to climb in if necessary. Happy with that, I walked back out into the main room and noticed that one of the desk drawers, all of which had been shut just a moment before, was now open. The sight nearly sent me scurrying back to the wardrobe in a panic before logic reasserted itself and calmly pointed out that I had not heard the door open or shut, and I had heard no footsteps other than my own. The drawer must have been open before, and I had not noticed.

At least that is what I told myself as I walked up to the desk and peered down into the open drawer to find a piece of paper inside. The paper was old and yellow, and when I carefully picked it up, it felt brittle, and little flakes of it came off around the edges. The ink was faded, and the handwriting was atrocious, but the words were in English, so I set the lamp down on the desk and settled down in the chair to try and read it.

_My friend,_

_It is done! Agrippa and I have arrived safely, and I have been welcomed with open arms. The two of us have joined Weyer in trying to get your banishment overturned, and I hope we will have results soon. You love was very happy to hear that you are well, and she looks forward eagerly to our next attempt, when she will be able to cross over and join you. _

_I thank you, my friend, for what you have done. You gave up your chance to be reunited with you love so that I may cross over and be free of the Shadow. Mere words cannot describe how grateful I am. _

_The least I can do is give you a warning. The man that was the driving force behind your banishment has also been banished to the world where you now reside. Apparently, it was some years ago, though no one has been able to tell me exactly why he was sent away. Weyer fears that he may take his rage at the punishment out on you if he finds you. Do be careful._

_And I know I have said it before, but please keep an eye on that assistant that you brought in as well. He never seemed right to me. The servants always felt more trustworthy to me than him._

_Forever in you debt,  
>Daniel<em>

I looked at the letter in confusion for a second before I put it down. Who is this Daniel, and who was he writing to? Who was the assistant? The letter implied that the servants, while somewhat untrustworthy, were still more so than the assistant. What did it all mean?

The voice was silent on the subject.

I put the letter back in the drawer where I found it, full of questions, and spent a couple more minutes before I began to wonder what to do next. The guest room seemed like a decent place to hide, but the sight of the bed, even though it was too nasty to contemplate sleeping on, made me long to do just that as I realized again how tired I was. If I stayed in the room, I would end up going to sleep, so I needed to find another place. I also needed to find a place to wash up and take a look at the damage to my back. I picked up my lantern and walked back into the back hall. I now had four options to take. I could go into the study, or past it through the door on the far left, or I could go right through the door at the other end of the landing. I discarded taking the door on the lower level to the storage area; I knew it wouldn't have anything that I needed. The study likely wouldn't either, and going left past it would take me back in the direction of my rooms, where I did not want to go.

So I turned right, and went through the door, which led me into another long hallway. I came to an intersection, and the voice returned -

_Go right._

- so I opted to follow it, since it had not led me wrong yet. I followed its directions and soon found myself at an ornate door. I carefully eased it open and peeked around it to find a large suite of rooms that just seemed to scream from what little I could see that they were the master suite. They were Alexander's rooms then, and I stepped in and closed the door behind me like usual. The light of my lamp revealed a richly appointed sitting room with many tables, comfortable chairs, bookshelves that were loaded down with books and beautifully woven rugs and tapestries. Unlike the guest room I had seen earlier though, the room was clean and dust free, as though someone were still using them. Maybe Walther had taken up residence or something. I got the strangest impression that the voice was scoffing at that as I looked around, and as luck would have it the very next room that I walked into was a bathroom. It was nowhere near modern; it looked like it hadn't been updated in well over a century, but it would suit my needs nicely. There was a mirror as well as a pitcher and basin, and I was thrilled to see that the pitcher was full of clean, cool water. I looked around the room for a moment.

"No peeking!" I said sternly to whatever may have been watching, and then I took my shirt off as carefully as I could so not to pull the forming scabs off the cuts on my back. I poured the water from the pitcher into the basin and soaked a clean cloth that I found in it and then wrung it out. It was a bit awkward, but I was able to wipe off most of the dried blood to see how badly that thing had gotten me. With the area clear, I could plainly see the cuts in the mirror when I looked over my shoulder. They slashed diagonally from my right shoulder down to just above my left hip, but they didn't appear to be that deep. My shirt, the t-shirt, as well as the flannel, were slashed open, with four large tears running across the back of them. They were also coated with blood in that area, and I wondered if there was something else I could use in their place, since I didn't want to walk around wearing the scent of blood while there were predators in the castle.

Speaking of blood, I tossed my ruined shirts aside and used the rest of the water to try and get the blood out of my hair. I was able to get most of it, but I could wait to find a safe place with a nice hot shower, some place preferably far, far away from here.

I went through a door in the bathroom into a large dressing room, so hoping that Walther wouldn't mind me borrowing a shirt or something. I poked through the nearest dresser and found a simple white men's shirt with long sleeves. The collar was a little weird, and the cut seemed to suggest that it was a fashion from an earlier era, so maybe Walther was into period clothing. Ay any rate, it would suit me just fine. I slipped it on and button it up, and then I had to roll the sleeves up a couple times. Strange, I didn't recall Walther being that much taller than me. In a nearby wardrobe I also found a red coat with yellow embroidery. The embroidery was faded and missing in some places, and I could see the faint outlines of something that had once been stitched onto the right breast. Figuring I might as well take it since I was shivering a bit, I took it off its peg and slipped it on. The sleeves were again too, but the heavier material resisted being rolled, so I would just have to deal with it.

The dressing room also had two doors, so I stepped through the second one into a large bedroom. I yawned and felt my body sag as soon as I laid eyes on the bed. I desperately needed to sleep and urgently. Adrenaline could only keep me going for so long.

_Get your rest child, I will keep watch._

Despite the assurance of the voice, I went back to the main room and barricaded the door as best as I could. I then returned to the bedroom, and after placing my lamp on a nightstand, I did the same with the two doors leading in and out of it. I then set the alarm to go off in an hour. A quick cat nap would suit me well enough; a full night's sleep could wait until I was safely out of the castle. I set the ringer to vibrate and stuck it under the pillow. I laid down on the bed and crashed instantly.

**OOOOOO**

When the buzzing vibration of the alarm woke me later, the damned storm was still going. I groaned and flopped back down to the pillows at the thought on not being able to escape yet. That turned out to be a bad idea as I nearly fell asleep again. Grumbling to myself, I dragged myself off the comfortable bed and stuffed my phone in my pocket. I took stock of things and noted that the oil in the lamp was running low, so after using it to light a candle that was on the nightstand, I blew it out and refilled its reservoir using the jar of oil I had found earlier and then relit it.

It was by the light of the newly refilled lamp that I spotted another piece of paper lying on the nightstand where none had been before. I couldn't help the small shudder that ran through me at that. The existence of the voice had already announced loud and clear that the place was haunted (Either that or I was losing my mind.) but I was certain no one living had been able to get into the room with me, yet there was the proof that something had.

With my hands shaking just a bit, I reached out and picked it up.

_6th of August, 1839 _

_Today, Alexander explained about the wards in the castle. There are many of them, and most, he told me, are too complicated to explain. The most important ones are what he calls the "Intent Wards". There are on all the bedrooms, as well as the Back Hall. He told me that their function is to "read" the intentions of anyone who crosses them. If their intentions are harmless, the ward lets them pass. If they intentions are not harmless, the wards will stop them from going any further. If whomever intends to kill or do grievous harm to someone, the wards will destroy them. _

_Of course, he explained, the wards do have their limits. They will not harm the cat that chases the mouse across them, and if someone is already safely over them when their intentions become harmful, then the wards can do nothing. Only if one crosses them, can they act. _

_I was fascinated, and I must admit a bit skeptical, but Alexander told me that if we have another escape from the Prison cells, there is a chance that I will see them at work. There are two ways out of the prison below us, and the second is known only to Alexander and myself The main one, the one that the prisoners themselves know, requires that they take the lift up and pass through the Back Hall. _

The rest of the note was illegible, but it explained much. It explained why the thing that had been chasing me earlier had been destroyed on entering the back hall. That knowledge chilled me. Granted, I had known that it hadn't been about to ask me out for coffee or anything, but the note was confirmation that it had been out to kill me.

I shivered again.

I spent a couple minutes after that clearing the rest of the gunk from my eyes and trying to wake up, and then I listened for any signs of anything moving around on the other side of the door. Hearing nothing, I carefully dragged the dresser that I had moved earlier and stuck my head out the door. Seeing nothing, I then went to the door out in the hallway and listened at that one as well. Hearing nothing, I pulled the table and chairs I had piled up in front of it away and carefully opened it. The corridor was empty, and as I was taking note of this my stomach growled, reminding me that all the energy I had expended required food. I knew the kitchen was in the area, so I opted to sneak that way and maybe find me a little something to tide me over. Leaving a room that I knew to be safe was a fool's errand, I knew, but I had to eat something, or I was going to pass out. And this time, there might not be any helpful wards to protect me.

I hadn't gone far when I heard yet another dreaded growl directly somewhere in front of me. I couldn't see anything past a few feet; the rest of the hallway was swallowed in the gloom, but I could feel the hostile gaze on me, and then I heard it running right at me. I did an abrupt about face and ran for my life. I tried to get back to Alexander's rooms, but I became hopelessly lost, and I couldn't even tell where I was, much less where I needed to go. Whenever I thought I was heading the right direction, I would hear another growl from that hallway, which of course was great incentive not to go down that way. It seemed odd to me (And it seemed even odder that I had time to think of such things while running down a castle corridor from some unspeakable monstrosity.) but the one that was behind me never seemed to close in on me, and the ones in the side halls never seemed to give chase.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I saw the door to the back hall, and I grinned like the Cheshire Cat and put on a burst of speed. I ran through the open door and ran about halfway down the upper level before I turned back, eager to see the wards in action. To my surprise, and disappointment to be honest, the thing chasing me just stopped, just before the door, as if it knew about the wards. I stood there, between the doors to the study and the guest bedroom and watched to see what it would do, but the watching was rudely interrupted by another growl from the lower level. I slowly turned my head to look down and saw another creature ascending the steps by the door I had just come through.

"Oh god damn it." I groaned and then I turned and ran once again. This time I didn't go far. I ran into the study and hoped those wards would stop it from following me. I also hoped that there wouldn't be anymore of the damn things in there. I bolted down the hallway, and followed it as it turned left for a short distance and then right. The hallway, which was lined by windows on the left side, was blocked off at the end where the ceiling had collapsed, so I bolted right into a large room and slammed the door. I then piled up everything that I could find that wasn't bolted down in front of it. Of course only then did it occur to me that I should have made sure that I was alone in the room first, especially after a nicely paneled door swung open with a quiet squeak of its hinges on the opposite side of the room.

I dove under the large table that took up the center of the square room and waited with bated breath for something to walk through it, but after several minutes when nothing did, I cautiously climbed out from under the table and approached the door. I didn't hear anything so I peeked around the door and saw only a private study with a desk, a bookshelf, a small table with a record player, a couple of weird statues, a nice love seat and most importantly, a wood stove with a merrily burning fire.

I stepped in and closed the door behind me, and it was then that I noticed the painting over the couch. I walked closer and looked at. It was a painting of an old man, with white hair just past his shoulders and a red coat with yellow embroidery and a stylized A on the right breast pocket. I knew, then, who he was; I had seen him in my bedroom during my first night in the castle, and I was currently wearing his coat.

"Alexander?" I said quietly, and I heard the voice respond.

_Yes._


	6. A Loss

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all: I only wish I did. **

**6.  
>A Loss<strong>

I stumbled backwards and fell down onto the chair that was in front of the desk, staring at the portrait the entire time. Needless to say, I really, really did not relish the idea that I had been led around by someone that was for all intents and purposes a serial murderer. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, a gust of wind roared through the closed room, which reminded me of the other times such a thing had happened.

"Didn't like to hear the truth?" I said out loud. I knew I was treading on thin ice - I had heard tales of violent ghosts that could attack the living, and I had no idea if Alexander was one of those types. Of course a murderer in life would have no problems with being one in death.

_Enough of that! _Alexander snapped angrily _You know nothing of which you speak!_

I snorted. "Enlighten me then. No wait, better yet, don't enlighten me. If you're like every other murderer out there, you have a perfectly good excuse for what you did. So what is yours? Did your mommy tell you that you couldn't have any dessert after supper, or did Daddy ignore you? Better yet, did your wife leave you for another man? C'mon, which is it?"

_You know nothing! _he snarled quietly, and I stood up.

"It doesn't matter anyway." I said as I walked through the door to the larger room and began to remove the barricade I had piled up in front of the other door. "I'm leaving, and once I'm out of this God accursed place, I'm going to have it razed to the ground. Then I'll sell the property to some developer and go home."

_No, you can't! _Strangely, he sounded a little frantic, and I wondered why for a brief moment before I decided that that it didn't matter.

"Watch me." I said as I walked down the hall back towards the back hall. I was going to find a nice place to hide, hopefully someplace behind those wards that that diary entry or whatever it was mentioned, and wait for the storm to pass. Once it was gone, I could walk to the nearby village, and from there it would be a car to the law office that had called me. I was getting the hell out of Brennenburg as soon as possible.

I reached the metal door that led to the back hall, and I pressed my ear against it for a moment. Hearing nothing, I eased it open and peaked out. The hall appeared deserted, so I cautiously stepped out -

_Please, Alexandra._

- and crept down the landing towards the door that led into the hallway that led back to my rooms and, eventually, to the front entrance. The door was standing open, but just before I reached it, it slammed shut. The sound echoed loudly in the high ceilinged room, and I didn't dare attempt to open it. A part of me did think that it could have been Alexander that had closed it, but it could have been one of his little friends as well. I walked down the stairs with the intention of heading down into the storage area to find a place to hide. For some reason, I just didn't like the idea of going into the guest room, nor did I was to go down the hallway leading back to Alexander's rooms. It had been infested with those eldritch abominations before, and I had no reason to believe that they were gone. Other than the storage and the door from the cellar archives that I had come from, there were no other exits from the hall, and I did not want to go through the archives again. I walked across the hall, passed the fountain, and to the flight of steps that led down to the door that opened into storage, and then I snarled in frustration when I heard a growl from the other side of the door, and something body slammed against it. I turned back to go back upstairs into the guest room, bad feelings be damned, when I looked up and spotted a few more of those things standing up there looking down at me. I expected them to rush at me, but to my surprise they did not. Instead they simply began shambling calmly down the staircase by the storage entrance towards me.

I backed away from them slowly, unwilling to take my eyes off of them, even as it made my mind (Not to mention my lower jaw. Yeouch!) screech in pain to look at them. I vaguely thought that I was going to need to scrub out my skull with brain bleach and mental floss by the time I was free of this place, and I had to clamp down on the hysterical laughter that wanted to boil up at the idea. The teleporting closet monster squad just casually shambled (Is that even possible? I wondered.) down towards me, and before I knew it, I felt my back hit the wall at the bottom of the staircase on the study side of the hall. Or rather, I hit a banner that was hanging on the wall, and I came to the obvious yet so very nasty realization that they had me trapped. There was no where to go.

Unless...

The note that I had read in Alexander's rooms had mentioned a way to the Prison from the back hall, which meant that there was another exit somewhere. I knew where the other doors led, so that left the wall I was standing against. I stretched out a hand and started to feel around, and soon my left hand encountered what felt like a door handle under the heavy material of the banner. Deciding that opening the door was more important than keeping my eyes on the things in the with me, I turned around, pushed the banner aside, spotted the door, and flung it open. It opened into a large room, with many tall columns leading down to a single opening in the far wall that was flanked by twin lion statues. I spotted another door on the left wall, but it was heavily barred, so it was definitely not an option. I heard the monsters snarling and growling in anger behind me, so I sprinted towards the door at the other end. Behind me, I heard a tearing sound which I figured was them pulling the banner down, followed by them running after me.

I was barely halfway across when I noticed that the doorway led only to a tiny space barely four feet square. By the time my brain processed the information that it was a dead end, I ran into it and had to throw the hand that wasn't holding my lamp up to keep from slamming face first into the back wall. I spun around just in time to see Mr. Flappyface slam the gates closed over the doorway, trapping me inside. I looked around the tiny room for any kind of escape, and I spotted the lever sticking up from the floor. With a shaking hand, I reached out and pulled the lever down. With a hiss of steam and a jarring that shook the entire car, the elevator that I was standing in began to descend.

Speed wise, it couldn't hope to contend with the express elevators in Taipei 101, but it suited me just fine. I sagged against the corner as it descended past three or four floors and then past a solid rock face. I sank to the floor, closed my eyes, and allowed myself to relax for a moment, glad that I was away from those unspeakable baddies.

Wait a minute.

Didn't the note say that the elevator connected the back hall to the prison?

Damn it.

I groaned as the elevator came to a stop, and I looked through the gates to see a large room with stone walls and a stone floor that was dimly lit by a few candle stands. I thought about taking the elevator back up, but then I realized that those things were likely waiting for me upstairs, so I got to my feet with a sigh and pushed the gates open and stepped out. I picked my way across the debris littered floor to metal gate that was in surprisingly good condition. A wall mounted torch provided flickering light, but beyond that the hallway was swallowed by total blackness.

"Are there any more of your friends in here, Alexander?" I asked out loud "Should I be worried about being disemboweled once I step around the corner?" I felt a sense of anger and irritation, and then he responded:

_No. On no commands of mine do they roam this castle. _

"So all those stories got it completely wrong? It was just a coincidence that all those people vanished on your watch?"

_You know nothing, foolish child. _he all but snarled, and I snorted in derision as I stepped through the gate into the hallway beyond.

"Then enlighten me, damn it, instead of speaking in riddles." I replied as I lit my lamp. He didn't respond to that, so I cautiously edged down the corridor, listening for anything else that may be in the area with me. At first I didn't hear anything, so I crept down the hall and followed it when it turned left. I shivered as I walked; the atmosphere was very oppressive, and the very walls seemed to ooze misery and despair. I had only been in there for a few minutes, but I couldn't wait to get out. The place just made my skin crawl.

I walked down the hall, and when I passed a second hallway that led off to the right someplace, I began to hear faint sounds, though at first I couldn't identify them. I passed another hallway, this one leading off to the left, went up a flight of stairs, and it was then that I realized that the sounds sounded human. Despite my best judgment I followed the sounds to the right, down a short flight of steps and to a heavy wooden door with a small barred window. On the other side was a hallway extending down a short ways to a T intersection. A torch on the wall at the intersection was lit, which allowed me a clear view of the deserted hallway. The door was unlocked, so I cautiously opened it and headed down the hall. I passed a door on my right, and when I reached the intersection, I saw a flight of steps leading to a door on the right and a hallway that went down and turned a corner on the left. I opted to go right for now, so I went up the stairs and grabbed the door handle. I gave the door a quick rattling shake to see if there was anything on the other side. When nothing went "Rawr!" in response to the noise, I carefully eased the door open and peeked inside. My brief look revealed a large open room with no sign of any unfriendlies, so I opened the door all the way and stepped in.

I walked into what appeared to be a kitchen of sorts, though modern appliances were no where in sight. There was an open fire pit to the left, complete with fire crackling away under a hook and spit. There were also a few tables and shelves with crockery and rotting rations. Beyond that were two stone half walls which sectioned off a storage area, and beyond that two more storage areas, which to judge by the buzzing flies, held something rotten. There was a pathway leading straight back to the back of the room, and I could see a metal drum of some kind lying on the floor back there, heavily corroded and full of holes. Not seeing anything of use, except for a small jar of oil and a tinderbox that were sitting on a shelf by the door, which I quickly picked up, I turned and walked out of the room and down the hall. I passed by the hallway I had come from and past a boarded up hole in the wall before the hallway ended in a staircase going up and to the right. At the top the hallway turned right and went down to another T intersection, though the path straight ahead was blocked off my a cave in, leaving me with no other option but to go left.

I hadn't gone far down the now dark hall - the last lit torch had been at the intersection before the kitchen - when I came across yet another T intersection. I took the left turn, and followed it down and around a corner to another three way. I turned left down the branching hall, and before too long I came across two doors, one on each side of the hallway. The door on the right was dark, but the one on the left had the flicker light of a candle shining through, so I peeked through the barred window and got a surprise.

"Walther!" I fumbled for a moment before I was able to open the simple latch that kept the door from being opened from the inside and threw it open. Walther was on the floor, apparently unconscious with chains on his wrists and ankles. I also noted the large black and bleeding knot on the side of his head.

I knelt down beside him and shook him. "Walther!" He groaned quietly before he blinked his eyes open and looked at me like he had no idea who I was for a brief moment.

"Ms. Kesler?" he asked in confusion, and I nodded.

"What are you doing down here, Walther?" I asked as I looked at the ugly bump on his head.

"I do not know." he replied with a wince, as if the sound of his own voice was painful to hear "I was in Altstadt, and I must have been ambushed from behind. I cannot remember anything else. What are you doing down here, Ms Kesler?"

I told him about the night's events, and about how Alexander was following me around and talking to me. Walther's face darkened at that.

"You mustn't trust him, Ms. Kesler." he said firmly "You mustn't pay attention to anything he says."

"I don't plan to. Not after he sicked his little friends on me multiple times. We've got to get out of here. Where in the hell is the key to these chains?"

Walther pulled himself to a sitting position and told me to pay attention. "There is a store room down here; it should have a spare key in there."

"Where is the store room?"

"Go out of this room and go right. Go back down to the intersection and turn right again. Go down the hall, go straight and turn left when the hallway does. Follow it to another intersection and turn right a third time. Go all the way to the end and turn right again. There will be a short flight of stairs. Go down them and follow the hallway to the store room. The key should be in there, somewhere. Can you remember that?"

I nodded fervorently, and I stood up.

"Ms, Kesler," Walther said as I turned to walk out, and I turned back to look at him. "Put out your lamp." I blinked in incomprehension. "You are safer in the dark. I don't know what those things are, but they night vision seems to be very poor, so put your lamp out." I swallowed heavily and nodded in understanding, and then I blew out my light source. I then walked out of the cell and closed the door behind me. I went back the way I came, but I had to use the wall to find my way, because it was pitch black without my lamp, and I could see nothing. The walls felt damp and slimy, and I kept wanting to wipe my hand off on my shirt. I kept repeating Walther's directions in my head like a mantra, and I soon came to the hallway that led off to the right that I had come from. I went past it and continued straight, and soon the hallway turned left like Walther said it would, so I followed it down until I reached the intersection. The hallway that went off to the right was brightly lit, so I had to spend a minute letting my eyes adjust to the sudden brightness before I could move on. The corridor was a mirror on the one I had found Walther in, with two cells halfway down its length. I walked down the hall, fairly relaxed an at ease, since I had not encountered any baddies since taking the elevator down. I cruised down the hall, down the stairs, and down the short hallway to the store room. The small room was lit by a torch and three walls were lined with shelves that were cluttered with all manner of things. I had to dig around for a few minutes before I found a heavy iron key lying on a top shelf behind a box.

I stuffed the key in a pocket of my - Alexander's - coat and then cheerfully walked out of the room. With the key I would be able to free Walther, and then the two of us could get out of this damned place, and then I could have the place leveled.

_Please Alexandra..._

I ignored Alexander and walked down the hall back to the darkened area. I decided that since there were no monsters about, I might as well use my lamp, so I lit it and made my way back to Walther.

I had just rounded the corner at the right turn just before the intersection that branched off to where Walter was, when I heard the most spine chilling sound. It was a moan, but in no way could it be described as anything remotely human. It was long and drawn out, and I damn near dropped my lamp, and I scuttled backwards in terror and huddled down in the corner.

_Put out your lamp, child! _Alexander commanded, and I had just enough presence of mind to do so as I heard a voice that at first sounded nothing like Walther pleading in German. That was followed by the sounds of rattling chains and then the thing - it sure as hell wasn't the malformed monsters I had seen earlier - make something that sounded halfway between a moan and a snarl. I curled up in a ball and couldn't help the whimper that escaped, and I hid my face in my knees and cringed as I heard some kind of weapon tearing into flesh as Walther's gruesome screams echoed down the hallways. The screams ended abruptly in a gurgling sigh, and I had to bite back my own horrified scream, as the new thing moaned again. This was followed by the sound of something walking down the hall towards the other end, and the sound of something being dragged. I pressed myself as far against the wall as I could go and just waited for it to disappear.

I remained huddled against the wall in the corner for I don't know how long, and when I finally mustered the nerve to pick myself up, I shakily reached into a pocket to get my cell phone. But my hands were shaking to hard to keep a hold of such a small object, and it slipped through my fingers to bounced off the floor. It skittered off into the darkness, and I moaned myself when I heard the distinct sound of something within it breaking when it landed. I couldn't see it - I couldn't even see the wall I was standing by - and after what I had just heard I wasn't about to light my lamp to look for it. I had no choice but to leave it wherever it was and move on. I took a deep breath and walked on, leaving my last hope of contact with the outside world lying broken on the floor somewhere behind me.

When I came to the intersection, I didn't want to go back down towards where Walther had been, but I had to check on him, even as I knew what I was going to find. The candle in the cell was still lit, so it allowed a little light to see by as I made my towards the door. It also made me visible to anything that may have been lurking, so I was a nervous wreck by the time I reached the cell.

The door was open, and I nervously peeked around the doorframe to see a blood splattered cell, but no sign of Walther. There was blood everywhere; on the walls, floor, and the ceiling, and I knew that no one could have lived through losing so much blood. I sagged against the door frame and stared at the macabre scene in front of me.

"How could you, Alexander?" I whispered, but he was silent and did not answer. Rage boiled up at his silence. "How could you!"

_Be silent, child! _he snapped, which only made me angrier.

"He was innocent! What did he do to piss you off? Was it because he was going to lead me out of here? I guess you aren't going to be happy until I'm dead too! Is that it, Alexander, you murderer!

_Alexandra!_

"No, you don't have the right to speak my name! I don't want to hear your voice, so just shut up!"

_Alexandra!_

"Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP! I don't want to hear -"

Another inhuman moan interrupted my tirade, and this time, instinct took over before I had a chance to engage my brain. I ran down the dark hall, back towards the three way, but it was so dark that I could see where I was going, but it didn't matter. I was so desperate to get away from the source of that chilling sound that I ran without thinking. By the time my mind was able to reassert control over my body, I had no idea where I was. I was at the end of a long dark corridor, up against a door that led into another hallway. I through about going through the door, but the shiny new padlock on it put an end to that thought quickly. I was between the door and small stack of wooden crates, so I crouched down for a moment while I decided what to do. I had no idea where in the prison I was, or even if I was still in the prison. I didn't think I had left it during my panicked run, but one never knew.

I shifted a bit, and I heard the key that I had picked up jingling in my pocket. They key! Maybe it would open the door! Grinning with excitement, I fished the key out of my pocket and inserted it into the lock, but to my disappointment, it went in, but it wouldn't turn. I tried a few times before I gave it up as a bad job. Figuring that I would never get out of here if I just huddled in the dark, I stood up, stuffed the key back in my pocket, took up my lamp (All the while being amazed that it hadn't been dropped or broken during my run.) and went down the hallway towards who knows where. I reached another three way, and this time I went right, down a short corridor to a gate. This one was locked with a heavy iron padlock, and I tried the key in pocket again and this time met with success. The gate swung open on silent hinges, and I walked through it and down a short distance to another metal door.

I walked through the door and sighed in relief as light flooded my sight, even as I winched in pain at the sudden brightness. I was in a large brick lined structure, that made me think of a well, though it was much, much larger than that. I guessed that it was about five or so stories tall, and a grate opened to the outside at the top, which made me wish I could climb walls like a spider. I was standing at one end of a stone bridge, or rather, what had once been a stone bridge. The center of it had collapsed at some point, and instead a wooden ladder had been put in it's place, which allowed me to climb down to the floor one level below. There were two doors on the same level that I had started on, but there was no way to reach them. The stairs leading up to them had fallen down as well, and only the rusted remains of chains hanging from the sloped walls hinted that there may have been bridges at one time. That left me with only one other option, so I climbed over the rubble of the collapsed bridge and walked through a doorway and down a short hall to a set of stone U shaped stairs. I followed them down and they eventually led to another metal door. As I opened it and walked through it, I began to wonder just how far underground I was.

I stepped through the door and was immediately hit by the smell of water. I was in a small room with a gate at the other end, and when I opened it and walked through I was greeted by a ladder which led down into water that looked to be about knee deep. Stuffing my lamp as best as I could in a pocket, I carefully climbed down the ladder and stepped off into the water, unable to contain a yelp at the water's frigid temperature. I walked just a few feet forward when I heard that dreaded moan again. This time I just barely managed to clamp down on the primal terror that surged up from somewhere in my psyche, and I darted over to the left and crouched down in the water next to a support pillar as the clanking of metal combined with the splashing of something walking through the water let m know that something was coming. And this time, the area was too brightly lit to hide in the shadows. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed myself as close as I could to the wall and hoped for the best as whatever it was moved closer.


	7. Another Side

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all; I only wish I did.**

**7.  
>Another Side<strong>

I huddled against the stone support jutting out from the wall, and listened with a racing heart as the same kind of thing that had killed Walther walked closer to my hiding spot. I tried to control my panicked breathing as I stopped only a few feet away and stood there for a moment. It then turned and began to walk away. I peeked out from behind my hiding place to see something that may at once have been human. It's head was bald, and it had a sword of some kind grafted on just below its elbow instead of a forearm. Its right arm was normal. Its skin was kind of a greenish hue, and it was dressed in the weirdest looking outfit I had ever seen; it looked a some kind of weird roman style armor. It was colored green and hung off the creature's left shoulder and hung down to just above its knees. The lower legs, like on the other creature that I had seen, were gashed and torn, and they had pins and metal bars sticking out of them.

It walked down the passageway that I was in, and out into what looked like a large open room with a water wheel at the other end. The water wheel wasn't moving, and I noticed that there was enough spaces between the blades for me to slip through if I needed to. Right then the creature turned around, so I ducked back into my hiding spot and hoped it hadn't seen me. I heard it walking closer again, and again, it stopped only a few feet away from me, before it slowly turned and walked back out into the large room. It did this a few more times before the realization sank it; it wasn't leaving the area. I could either go back the way I came and hope that I could run up the ladder faster than it could run down the corridor (and hope that it couldn't climb the ladder as well) or I could try and get past it. Staying in place was not an option. Eventually, I would be seen or do something to accidentally give myself away, or the frigid water would send me into hypothermia. I had to move.

As I was wondering what to do, I heard a creaking sound, followed by the sound of wood snapping, and I turned back the way I came just in time to see the ladder I had come down, collapse into the water with a loud splash. The creature heard the noise and came running back towards me to investigate. I held my breath as it ran right past me to the broken ladder, and I was given a brief glimpse of a horribly malformed head before I decided to run while it was facing away from me. If I could make it to the water wheel, it's height would slow it down, since it would have to duck lower to get under it. Seizing my chance, I leapt to my feet and began running. Almost immediately, I heard the thing turn towards me and give chase.

I cursed the knee deep water as it slowed me down considerably, but the fear of being impaled by the blade that that thing used for a left arm lent me spend. I heard it gaining on me, and just as I ducked under the water wheel, it put on a burst of speed behind me. I ran through the center of the wheel, and ducked down under the other side, and couldn't help turning around to get a good look at what had been chasing me. It was slashing fruitlessly at the waterwheel, and missing it completely, and I screamed in horror when I saw it's face. Or rather, what it had instead of a face.

Instead of eyes, nose, and a mouth, it instead had only a gaping slit, which started at the very top of the back of its head (Why had I not noticed that before?) and continued over the top of the head and down to just above the chin. The maw was lined with teeth, and a single eye sat on the (creature's) right edge of the gaping hole. I could easily imagine the moaning I had heard earlier coming out of that thing. As I stared in horror, it landed a hit on the metal of the water wheel, and it began to bend under the assault. I took that as my cue to stop staring and run for my life, which I did. I ran straight across yet another open room to the only exit on the opposite side, which led into a hallway that went a ways ahead and then turned right. About halfway down was a staircase leading up and to the right, and just as I heard the water wheel give way, I ran up the stairs and through a door at the top. I closed the door as quickly and as quietly as I could as I heard the thing running through the water towards me. I then ran through the room, and into a smaller room that had another door at the end. I ran through this door and closed it as well, and turned to find only a ladder leading up. Hoping that it was in better shape than the one that I had taken down into this area, I practically ran up it and into a small room that was fill with stuff. I then jumped into a corner and huddled down behind a stack of crates. Even through four rooms, two closed doors, and up a ladder, I could hear the thing moaning as it searched for me, but I didn't hear it attempt to break any doors down, so hopefully I was safe for the moment.

After several minutes, it's moaning stopped, so I peered out of my hiding place and hoped it was gone. I stepped out into the room and took a moment to refill my lamp's reservoir, and then I lit it to take a look around. The room was full with books and clothes, and everything appeared to be someone's personal effects that had been stuffed into this room and forgotten. I started browsing shelves and peeking in trunks, and I found some more oil, which I took, and a couple more tinderboxes, which I left. I had enough of them to last me a while.

There were several books, though most were in either German or Latin, though there was one that was in the oddest language I had ever seen. I recognized neither the words, nor the alphabet that it was written in. I couldn't hope to decipher it, but some strange compulsion made me stuff it in a pocket instead of putting it back on the shelf. I continued to browse the shelves, and I found one handwritten book that seemed to be in French, though water and humidity had rendered it illegible. As I went to put it back on the shelve, I noticed another crumbling piece of paper. I carefully picked it up and found that it was in English, and it was written, if the atrocious handwriting was anything to go by, by that Daniel character.

_12th of August, 1839_

_Today, Alexander introduced me to his new assistant, a man that is simply known as Walter. I did not like the man on sight, but I remembered my manners and shook his hand in greeting. He did not return the greeting and walked away as soon as the introductions were done. Later after dinner, which he refused to join me and Alexander for, he found me in the archives and began to question me earnestly about the orb and where I had found it. He seemed simply curious, but under his curiosity, I detected a hint of something else. I cannot name what else was there, but I have the strangest feeling that his intentions are more than they seem. _

_Alexander shares my suspicions about Walter's intentions, but he believes that he does not mean any harm. Walter apparently knows a great deal about the orbs and their power, and he wishes to continue his research into them while here at Brennenburg. _

_Tomorrow we will conduct another warding ritual to hold the Shadow back long enough for us to use the orb to its fullest. I do not like what I have to do, but Alexander has assured me that the monsters in the prisons deserve no less for their crimes. Walter will observe, while I complete the ritual myself. Alexander will be nearby to collect the vitae that he needs. _

I frowned in puzzlement as I put the note back, and I wondered if this Walter character was the same assistant mentioned in that letter from Daniel to Alexander that I had read in the guest room earlier. As for the rest of the note: warding rituals, prisoners, vitae? What the hell was vitae, and what did Alexander need it for? I thought about asking him, but I was still pissed beyond belief at what had happened to Walther and so did not.

I poked around for a bit more, and I came across the strangest looking object. I was a small cylinder, with a small blue sphere embedded in the top. I reached out to touch it, and the room vanished as the vision filled with nothing but bright white light. I baritone voice - Alexander's - began speaking, and though the language was unlike any I have ever heard, before or since, I still could understand what he was saying.

_My love,_

_It has been three days since Daniel and Agrippa entered the portal and left this world behind. I patiently wait my turn, when we will open it again so that you may come over and join me here. I fear though, that such a thing will never come to pass. The King's men are watching me closely, and I know that they hold me responsible for the recent rash of disappearances, including the Zimmerman family Herr Zimmerman, his wife, and their three children vanished overnight, and their farm hands were slaughtered where they slept two nights ago, and I know that everyone in the region suspects me. _

_Daniel has warned me repeatedly about Walter, but I did not listen to his concerns. Now I fear it may be too late. Walter had always told me that he had the prison cells in the lowest levels under control, and I had no need to go down there. Now with Daniel gone, I fear that he may have been right all along, and that Walter intentions will bring ruin down on us all. _

_Tomorrow, when Walter is otherwise occupied, I will go down to the Nave, in the lowest level of the castle. Then I will see for myself what he has done. _

I shook my head and pulled my hand away from the cylinder, and the whiteness vanished, and the room returned. I stumbled back a few steps away from the cylinder as I tried to clear my head. What the hell? That had to be the strangest diary I had ever seen.

Deciding that I wanted as far away from it as possible, I descended the ladder and crept back out into the main area to find the monster long gone. I could have stayed in that little room, but something compelled me to keep moving. I walked back into the water, turned right, and walked through a large metal grate that looked as if some kind of giant had torn their way through the bars. The passage turned right, and led to another three way. I went left and followed it as it turned right, and I soon came across a set of steps leading up out of the water. I went up them and walked into a hallway that took a few turns through doorways that had no doors, though I could see markings on the stone where hinges had once been. The hallway ended in with a ladder going up, so I climbed on up, and after a long climb, I emerged from a well in a small room with four doors.

Two of the doors appeared to be jammed shut when I tried them, one led to a short hall and a small room with two levers. I didn't know what the levels did, so I opted to leave them alone for now. The fourth door led down a hallway and to a large stone spiral staircase. I took the stairs and at the bottom, I walked through a door into a hallway that had three doors. Two of the doors, the one directly in front of me and the one to the right, were boarded up. The third door, at the left end of the hall, was open, so I took it. It led to a set of wooden steps that led down into a dark room that had only a few candles for light. I lit my lamp and proceeded down the stairs.

The stairs ended at one end of the room. There was a doorway a bit to my left, and at the opposite end of the room were two large open doorways on either side of a short hall with another, smaller door. The door on my left led into what looked like a small storeroom, and it had another door on its opposite wall, but it was nailed shut. I stepped away from the stairs and spotted an alcove just ahead of me that was lined with rusted metal spikes in the front, and it had rusted chains hanging down from the ceiling. The floor of the alcove had a few pieces of straw, but what was lying on that straw made me feel a little queasy.

Bones. Human bones. Lots of them. Despite my nausea at the sight (and the knowledge that someone had likely been hung there and left to die) I stepped closer and looked at the bones. They were clean, with no sign of the flesh and muscle that once covered them, though the stone floor underneath was stained and discolored. It appeared to be a nearly complete skeleton, but there was no sigh of the skull. So either the poor bastard (or bitch) had been beheaded, or something or someone had carted the head off after the person had died. Either way, I'm sure it hadn't been a pleasant existence.

Seeing nothing worth looking at at that end of the room, I walked down to the doors at the other end. I approached the smaller door at the end of the short hallway first, but when I put my hand on the handle to open it, I was hit the strongest sense of unwelcome. Whatever was in the room on the other side of the door did not want me in there. I took my hand off the handle and backed away back into the main room. The worst part was I had the strangest feeling that sooner or later, I was going to have to go in there, but there was no harm in putting it off as long as possible.

I instead went through the large door on the right, and I went through a dark hallway with a small private study (In which I didn't find anything of note.) and a metal door at the end. The door opened into a long descending staircase, with two small rooms on either side about halfway down. I peeked into the one on the right and found a stone table with shackles for restraining a person's arms and legs. The table and the floor around it were covered in blood stains, and a nearby work table was covered with saws, scalpels, and knives. I shivered and turned to walk back out when a dripping sound caught my attention. I slowly looked over my shoulder just in time to see a single drop of blood run off the stone table and fall to land in a puddle on the floor.

"My god," I whispered in horror, and I ran across the stairs to the room on the other side.

This room also had the stone table and table covered with tools, and like the other room, there was fresh blood on the table, the floor, and the tools.

_Paint the man, cut the lines..._

I shivered at the voice, a tenor with a noticeable British accent, that seemed to come from everywhere. I started to back out of the room, but before I could reach the door, a person appeared on the table! It was a man, and his battered body was dressed only in what looked like a pair of shorts, and his face was covered by a burlap sack that was tired around his neck. He was moaning and squirming a little, and I heard the shink! of a knife being drawn. A pattern in some kind of glowing green paint appeared on the man's chest and stomach, and his struggles to escape and his moans and cries, which were muffled by the sack, became more frantic.

_Paint the man, cut the lines! Cut the flesh, watch the blood spill - let it come._

I heard the sound of flesh being cut into, and deep wounds began appearing along the lines drawn by the paint. The man's moans turned into tortured cries as he writhed on the stone table.

_Please, I didn't do anything. Mya, mya, mya._

The voice sounded mocking as more wounds appeared on the body on the table.

_Paint the man, cut the lines, Paint the man, cut the lines! _

The prisoner's cries turned into agonized screams for a few seconds, and then the body stilled and fell silent.

_Hush, hush, now you sleep._

The body vanished from the slab, yet the speaking voice continued.

_I did well. One life for another. You hear me, Guardian of the Orb, I did all this for you. Now, once more, withdraw your shadow from my domain._

_Alexander, there isn't much time. I can feel it. We must act swiftly. I will do whatever it takes. _

The room flared with white light for a second, and the voice vanished. I stumbled out of the room, and felt something bump against my head and shoulder. I turned around -

- and screamed in horror to see a bloodied corpse hanging from the ceiling where none had been before. I fled down the staircase, screaming, paying no mind to where I was going. I just had to get away from that gruesome scene. I ran through a door at the bottom of the stairs, and into an enormous open room with only tall pillars supporting the ceiling somewhere far above. I ran across, still screaming in panic, not paying an attention to where I was going, and collided with another one of those things that I had seen in front of the water wheel earlier. My screams cut off abruptly as we stared at each other for a second - it seemed every bit as surprised to see me as I was to see it - and then it snarled at me and raised its blade. I scrambled back to my feet and bolted. I didn't pay attention to where I was going, I honestly didn't care, I just wanted to get away from thing that was right on my heels.

The room was lit with a foggy red light, and I could only see a few feet in either direction. Thankfully, this also applied to Splitface behind me, and I was able to duck behind a pillar and lose him after a short while. I could hear him walking around a short distance away and moaning and growling as he looked for me, and I oh so quietly crept from pillar to pillar to put more distance between us. I eventually spotted a cell door and crawled over to it and opened it as quietly as I could. I slipped in through the open door and shut it behind me. I then scurried down a hallway to a room at the end and stared in surprise.

A murmuring voice fell on my ears, along with the whimpers and cries of a child. I ducked just inside the doorway to the larger room and peered around it to see a man kneeling on the floor in front of an open iron maiden. A bloodied child wearing a blood soaked blue dress was lying on the floor in front of him, crying in pain as he gently dressed her wounds. I crept closer and couldn't contain a surprised gasp when I realized that the man was Alexander. He and the child paid me no mind as he gently gathered her into his arms and stood up. She clung to him as he carried her out of the room right past me, and the two faded from existence just past the door.

My head whipped back and forth from where they had vanished to the iron maiden on its raised dais. Had I really seen that? I felt an intense sadness then, and I realized that it was coming from Alexander, who was still hovering around me.

"Alexander," I asked quietly "what happened to that little girl?"

_She died. I was too late to save her. _

"Wasn't it you that put her there in the first place?"

He growled angrily and said nothing else. I stood up and walked towards the iron maiden, and I was sickened to see signs that it was still in use. Blood, some dried, some fresh, caked the spikes inside, and there was a sizable puddle on the floor in front of it.

I shook my head in confusion and began to walk away; just staying in the room was making my head hurt. I walked back out into the large open area and decided to try and find my way out. There was just one huge problem; I had no idea where in the hell I was. I really needed to stop running in a panic and getting myself lost.

Just to the left of door to the torture chamber was a large seemingly bottomless chasm, but on the other side, I could just barely see a floor and more columns on the other side. I decided to follow the chasm, and it would hopefully take me to where I needed to go. I crouched down and began creeping along the floor, hoping to avoid being spotted by Splitface. I crawled along the edge of the chasm, and I eventually came to a bridge leading across, but Splitface was there, thankfully facing the other way, so I hurriedly snuck past him and kept going. I soon reached the wall and another bridge, and this one I took. I clung to the wall on the opposite side, and I eventually came to another door. This one led to a large wheel and yet another vision of Alexander assisting the victim that was tied to it. It seemed like he had been too late to save this one, for he simply closed the eyes and walked away with his head bowed. He vanished before he reached me.

I left that room and continued on, clinging to the wall as I went, and I came to a third room. This one had screaming emanating from it, and I carefully snuck in to see a brazen bull with a fire going under it. Someone was inside, screaming and banging on the sides, and smell of burning flesh of was overpowering. I ran towards it and yanked the hatch open, and a person that was burned beyond all recognition scrambled out and ran out of the room, screaming. I followed him, though I was at a loss at what I was going to do if I caught him, and I ran out into the main area just in time to see him being impaled on Splitface's blade. His screaming gurgled to a stop, and, though the site made me feel ill, I darted behind a pillar in the hopes that I wouldn't be seen.

It was clear to me that the torture rooms were still in use, which heavily eroded the story that Alexander had been responsible for all of those disappearances. A dead man couldn't go out and kidnap people, much less torture and kill them.

I waited for a while until I was sure that the monster was gone, and then I crept out of my hiding place and began to follow a wall, looking for a way out. I had to climb across a makeshift bridge, which wobbled and shook under my weight, and I was very happy once I was safely across. I followed a wall for a bit more and soon I spotted a bridge, and despite the horrible visibility, I was able to see the exit door beyond that. Throwing stealth and caution to the side, I jumped to my feet and ran for the bridge. I heard a snarling moan as I was spotted, but I paid it no mind as I crossed the bridge and ran for the door. I reached the door, yanked it open, ran through, and slammed it behind me just as my pursuer slammed into it. I sprinted up the steps and ducked into one of the rooms that I had gone into earlier. I shut the door and hid in a dark corner, under a tool table and waited for Splitface to disappear. Thankfully, he apparently decided that I wasn't worth going after, and he didn't hit the door again.

After a few minutes, I figured it was safe, and I came out of my hiding place and climbed the stairs back up. I went through the door at the top and walked down the short hall to the larger room with the three doors. I still felt uneasy about going through the one door, so I went straight across through the second large door and down a dark hallway. I soon came across another metal door, and I went through it to find myself in an large room, lit only by faint light coming in through windows nearly the three story high ceiling. There were three doors along the walls, and a spiral staircase in the center of the floor. I walked up to the staircase and carefully began to climb. The rusted metal groaned and shook under my feet, and I feared that the entire thing was going to collapse, sending me plummeting to the stone floor below, but I made it safely to the top, and found myself in a small square room with a portrait of Alexander on the wall, and a door on the other side. I went through the door to find another private study. I poked through the desk and shelves and found another one of those cylinders. I swallowed heavily and reached out to touch it, and I again saw the bright light and heard Alexander speaking.

_Oh my love, it is as I feared._

_Daniel and I restricted our rituals to those that deserved such punishment, the rapists and murderers of the region. Walter, I learned last night, has not done the same. He targeted anyone that crossed his path, including the members of the Zimmerman family. I found the youngest child, a girl, locked in the iron maiden, but she died before I was able to get her to a doctor. It is too late for the rest of her family, Walter has tortured and killed them all, to what purpose I do not know. _

_Worse still, I suspect that he knows that I know of his actions, and I fear what he may do to keep his __secret. I has written a letter to King Fredrick, and I asked that it be delivered to Gabriel, the outrider, so that he may deliver it with all haste to the king. The human body that I am forced to inhabit is too old and frail for me to confront him myself, so the murder of innocents must go on until the king's men arrive. Not even regular infusions of vitae have been able to stop the aging that has plagued me since my arrive in this world nearly 300 years ago. _

_Daniel is gone, and without him, I have no hope of stopping Walter. As much as it pains me, I have to let him continue and wait until the king's men arrive to stop him. _

_My son lies in his cradle, barely a week old, and his mother has vanished. I fear that she was one of Walter's victims, though I have found no sign of her body anywhere in the castle. I fear for his safety. Walter would have no reservations about killing an infant, so I must find a place for my son to go before it is too late. Tomorrow I will speak with the Bauer family in Altstadt; it is well known that they have been unable to have a child of their own and they wish to leave this region. Maybe I can help them with both of those. _

_My love, I hope to see you again, but I fear that it will never come to pass. If Walter does not kill me, the king's men certainly will, for everyone believes that I am the murderer that has been stalking the innocents for all the years. If I perish here, know that my heart is always with you and that, even though I have lain with another woman, you and you only have my love. _

I took my hand off the cylinder and, once I could see my surroundings again, I walked to the door and closed it firmly. I then dragged a bookshelf over in front of it to hopefully make it difficult for anything to get in. I then sat down in the chair in front of the desk.

"Alexander,' I said "I'm ready to listen to what you have to say. I need to know what happened here? Please, tell me everything."

And then the room disappeared into the bright whiteness again as Alexander took me back.


	8. A Truth

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all: I only wish I did. **

**8.  
>A Truth<strong>

When the whiteness faded, I found myself in Alexander's rooms, though the perspective seemed a little... off. Like I was looking down from a little taller than I was used to. I was dressing myself, and when I saw the hands that were doing up my waistcoat, they were not mine. A look in a nearby floor mirror confirmed my suspicions; I was seeing things through Alexander's eyes. After the waistcoat was done up, I slipped on the red frock coat that I would later find in a wardrobe, though it was much newer, and all the embroidery was in place.

Now fully dressed, I lifted up a glass from somewhere and looked at the dark pink contents for a moment before I drank it down in a single go. It tasted a lot like blood, though I could taste something else in there that I could identify. I then set the glass down and turned away from the mirror as a baby's cry fell on my ears. I turned and walked into the bedroom to see a cradle over by the fireplace, with an older woman seated in a rocker beside it. As I watched, she reached down to soothe the fussy baby before she looked at me - Alexander - and asked if I really was going to go ahead with it. The woman spoke in German, but like Alexander's little cylinders, I could understand her.

"It must be done." I was started at the sound of Alexander's baritone coming out of what was technically my mouth, but since I was in his body (Maybe, the whole thing seemed to weird to adequately explain.) it was too be expected. Without another word, the woman gently scooped the baby up, wrapped him snugly in his blankets, stood up from her chair, and handed him to me.

"Your son, m'lord." she said quietly, and I nodded at her, before I turned around and strode purposely from the room. I couldn't help but notice that the castle seemed a bit more dilapidated than it was when I had arrived, and it was clear that someone had done some repair work before my arrival. This was borne out by the gaping hole in the ceiling of the entrance hall, but Alexander descended the stairs and walked out of the castle before I could get a good look.

It was full dark out, and there was a carriage and six waiting in the drive, and the footman opened the door for me, though he was careful to keep his eyes averted from the child in my arms. Once inside the carriage the door shut, and it began to move. It was a short ride to Altstadt, and Alexander never allowed his gaze to linger on his son. The carriage shortly came to a stop, and the door opened. I stepped out in front of a modest house with a thatched roof, and I walked up and the door opened before I could reach it.

I stepped inside the dark interior of the house, and I could see two people, a man and a woman by the flickering light of a single candle. The woman curtsied prettily before she eagerly held her arms out. Alexander kissed his son on his forehead, and then with a heavy sigh, he placed the sleeping infant in the woman's arms. He then pulled a small purse that jingled with the weight of the coins inside of it and handed it to her husband.

"Are you ready to leave?" Alexander asked, and the man, Jens Bauer, nodded.

"We are Freiherr." he responded with a nod.

"Good. My carriage will take you to Hamburg. It will travel nonstop. Once there, board the first ship that has available space. Do not stop; do not stay on this land any longer than you must. The sooner you leave, the safer you will be."

"And what of you, m'lord?" Hannah Bauer asked respectfully "What will you do?"

Alexander sighed. "I will return to Brennenburg, and do what I can to stop the madness. Once you are gone from here, do not write me or try to contact me. Leave no hint to where you have gone. Tell my son..." Alexander paused to take a deep, shuddering breath. "Tell him nothing of me. Let him live and die believing that he is no one's child but your own. Now go, you must move quickly." He ushered Jens and Hannah out the door and into the carriage. He spoke to the driver, who then clucked at the team, and the carriage rolled away, towards the only road that led in and out of Altstadt. Alexander watched it until it vanished into the night, and then he turned and began the long, lonely walk back towards the castle.

The white descended again, and when it lifted, I was back in the castle, in a part of it I had never seen before. It was a dimly lit room, two floors high, with a wooden staircase on either side, leading up to an upper level. There were eight cells doors in the room, four on the upper level, and four on the lower. There was a door behind me and another on the other side of the room. I, as Alexander, was standing in the center of the room, listening to the tortured cries of those imprisoned in the cells. The room reeked of suffering and pain, and I felt sick as the full weight of the knowledge of what exactly Walter had been up to pressed down on me. I wanted to scream in rage, but instead I settled for opening the cell doors and trying to help those within. One poor soul, who looked as though he'd been through a few rounds attacked me when I opened his door, and the Star of the Black Eagle, which I had been wearing on the left breast of my blue frock coat when flying. Despite that, he was able to calm the man down enough to force some kind of medicinal drink down his throat, which calmed him down even further.

Footsteps from below made me turn around, and a voice called out.

"Alexander? Are you in here, Freiherr?"

"Walter," Alexander hissed angrily. Fully aware that he could not hope to take on the younger, stronger man in a direct confrontation, Alexander left the poor man's cell and descended the stairs to confront his assistant. I couldn't make out Walter's features since he was backlit from behind, but Alexander knew it was him.

"What have you done, Walter?" he demanded "What is the purpose -" He waved his hand about, gesturing towards the cells around then. "- of all of this?"

"Surely you can figure it out, my lord?" Walter said mockingly "You need vitae, as do I. The difference is, you are choosey about who you collect it from. I am not."

"Why innocents, Walter? There are several murderers and such in the prisons. Why harm those that have done none?"

"I couldn't let you figure it out. Otherwise, you might figure out just who I am. Am I right, _Kanael_?"

Alexander was startled, though I didn't know why at the time. Walter then pulled a wicked looking blade from somewhere and began to advance on Alexander.

"And now," he said "it's time to be rid of you."

Alexander backed up a few steps, and then he turned and ran, slamming the door in Walter's face as he went. I recognized the room he ran into as the room that had the skeleton and the three doors leading out. The door that he had just closed was the one that I hadn't wanted to enter earlier. Behind him, Walter snarled in anger, slammed the door open, and gave chase. Alexander flew up the steps, fear lending him speed, and then he ran into the short hallway and up the spiral stairs. He closed every door he went through and latched then if they could be, hoping to slow Walter down. In the little room with the four doors and the well, Alexander went through one of the ones that I hadn't been able to open, and ran into a passage that seemed on the verge of collapsing. As he ran, he pushed hard against one of the support beams, which caused the ceiling to give way. He still did not stop running, though he slowed a little to try and catch his breath. I could feel the burning in his lungs; he was far to old and frail to be running like that. He continued down the hall, and up a flight of steps, down another hall or two, and up another stone spiral staircase the spiraled up through the prison and ended in a series of rooms that were being used for storage. He walked through the rooms and halls before he emerged from a hidden door in the main storage area. (Interesting...) He slowed to a walk, still trying to catch his breath and ease the burning in his chest. He walked out of the back hall, confident that Walter would have to take the longer way up through the sewers, the entrance to cistern, and then through the prison and up the elevator. He had to reach the entrance hall, from there he could take his carriage to Altstadt, and from there, he could go the Prussian capital. Walter had to be stopped, and if it meant throwing himself at the mercy of the king, then so be it.

He hadn't gone far when he began to notice something strange. Normally the old castle was full of servants scurrying about, but he didn't see a single one, and it worried him. He became even more worried when he began seeing evidence of struggles, torn curtains, tapestries ripped from their hangers, pictures knocked off the walls. And then he began to see splashes of blood. He heard a guttural hissing behind him, and he slowly turned around.

Behind him was one of the deformed jawless creatures that had stalked me through the castle, and he knew what it was, how it was created, and worst still, who it had once been.

"Gisela," he choked out, and then the creature charged him. He turned and fled, slamming every door he came across, grateful that the creature that had once been the mother of his son could not open doors normally and instead had to batter them down. It allowed him to get a lead on it, but it wasn't enough as more of them appeared and joined the chase. He reached the entrance hall and ran out of the front doors, screaming for help, but there was no one around to hear his cries. He had barely reached the drive when something struck him from behind, knocking him face first to the ground. Booted footsteps walked up to him, and he was kicked over onto his back to see Walter standing over him. Once again the bright sunlight made it impossible to make out his face.

"Now why did you do that, Kanael?" Walter asked "It would have been much easier on you if you had just let me kill you. I was going to make it quick, but for the trouble you just caused me, I think you deserve some punishment." With that he delivered a crushing kick to the side of Alexander's head, and the white descended once again.

This time when it lifted I was awestruck. I was the center of a massive city, and though it was dark out, the moonlight was more than enough light to see that it couldn't possibly be any city build by humans. No human architect or engineer had the skill or the knowledge to build what I was seeing. I was standing in a large crowd of people, and I could feel the collective anger rolling off the people there. I say people loosely, because they certainly weren't human. They were humanish, with two arms, two legs, ten fingers, and I assume ten toes, but their skin was blue, their ears were pointed, and their eyes and hair were stark white. They were dressed in the bare minimum of clothing, and it was easy to see why. Even though it was night outside, it was very hot, and that coupled with the white eyes made me realize that they were likely nocturnal.

The crowd was jeering and calling in the same strange language that Alexander spoke in his cylinders, and I moved through the crowd unnoticed to see what they were jeering at. At the center of the crowd there was a circular dais, on kneeling in the center of the dais, restrained in chains and wearing no clothing at all, was another person that I knew was Alexander, though he looked nothing like how I knew him. He had the same hair, skin, and eyes as those around him, and an air of defeat and misery hung about him.

"Kanael!" cried a female voice, and I looked to the left to see the female version of those people being restrained by several others. Alexander looked up at her, but a person standing next to him struck him hard with the butt of a staff.

"You do not have permission to raise your head!" he snarled angrily, and I was surprised to hear that, even though he was speaking in that odd language, I could understand him fine. Another person standing on Alexander's other side raised his hands for silence, and his clothes were a little more ornate than the others, signaling that he held some kind of position of power. Once the crowd had gone silent, he began to speak to Alexander.

"Kanael of House Servak, you have been found guilty of the crimes you have been charged with. Hear now your punishment. From this night on, you will cease to exist for us. No more will anyone speak your name or acknowledge that you existed. Your parents will not mention ever having a son, your wife will be as if she never married. The punishment for your crimes is death, but your wife pleaded with me for mercy, so mercy you will be granted. Open the portal!"

The crowd roared in approval as, on three small pedestals around Alexander, electricity began to spark and crackle. It then flowed across the open air to a large basketball sized orb that was sitting on a pedestal directly behind Alexander. It began to glow and flare with bluish white light, and above it, a blue circle formed in the air, and rapidly expanded to about the size of a vanity mirror. I could see a pine forest through it.

"Now wear the shape you shall be in for as long as you live." said the official looking guy, and Alexander fell to the ground screaming as his body began to shift and change. As I watched in horror, he slowly took on a human form, screaming in agony the entire time. "Go now, the one will no longer speak of, go, and die as a human among them!" Alexander, who was sobbing in pain, began to be drawn up through the portal, and as he passed through, the whiteness descended yet again.

I found myself back in the private study, and I shook my head as I tried to process everything I had just seen and heard. After a few minutes, I had everything sorted, but I was curious about one thing.

"Alexander," I asked "why were you banished?"

_I do not know._

I was shocked. "You don't know?"

_I was dragged out of bed during the middle of the day and thrown into a cell. I never saw or spoke to anyone until I was dragged out into the town center to be banished. _

"Why in the hell would someone want to banish you? Or kill you, since that was their original plan right?"

_Walter is from the same world, and he had I loved the same woman, but it was me that she fell in love with and married. I assume that he wanted me out of the way. He agreed to banishment instead of death only because she asked. _

"So it was Walter that was standing there then."

_Yes._

"And then he was later banished here himself for reasons Daniel wasn't able to get."

_Yes, once a person has been banished, they are treated as if they never existed, so likely Daniel was not able to get anyone to speak of it. _

"Yet, he was speaking of getting your banishment reversed, so maybe it was realized that you had been thrown out of false charges."

_It is possible._

"But you weren't going to go back, were you? Your wife was going to come here and join you."

_Yes. _Alexander sounded so sad then that it broke my heart listening to him.

"Your people must be very long lived."

_We are, but once in human form, I was subject to human aging. That is why I began the vitae extraction._

"Vitae?"

_A substance secreted in the blood of mammals during times of great stress. It enhances the reflexes and increases strength and speed. If consumed by my kind in large enough amounts, it slows aging, and can even stop it. I needed to stay alive long enough to see her again. I didn't care what it took._

"That sounds like adrenaline." I mused "So what did you do to get it?"

_I had to torture the prisoners. As long as they were alive and fearing for their lives, it would saturate their blood. I then could bleed them, purify it, and drink it. _

"Tasty."

_Very much so. _he commented dryly.

In high school I had taken an ethics class simply to get the credits needed to graduate, and at one point we discussed torture. I was one of the few in the class that believed that torture could be allowable under certain circumstances, such as times of war when the enemy had information that we needed but was refusing to give it up. The rest of the class thought that I, and the few others that agreed with me, were insane and ought to be locked up for life for daring to think such a way. That led to a discussion of what determined who was right and who was wrong during warfare, and the torture issue was never brought up again. Needless to say the idea of Alexander torturing people to extend his life didn't bother as much as one might think. At least his method, unlike Elizabeth Bathory's, actually worked.

"They all deserved it?" I asked.

_They did. I, and later Daniel, only tortured those who had committed serious offenses, such as murder or rape. The rest served out their sentences in my prison and were released to continue their lives._

"Until Walter came along."

_Yes. _

"Do you think your wife still lives?" I asked.

_Unless some illness or accident has befallen her, she should. Why?_  
>I stood up from the chair and took up my lamp. "Well, we need to get the portal open and get her over here then. At the very least you can speak to her as you're speaking to me now, right?"<p>

_Alexandra... _His voice was accompanied by such a feeling of warmth, I couldn't help but smile.

I pushed the bookcase aside and opened the door. I then descended the stairs and as I did so, I asked Alexander about the monsters in the castle.

_They are demons, he explained summoned to this plane by a ritual. The ritual requires a sacrifice and a body for them to inhabit. Once they are summoned into the body, they change and shape it to fit their needs. _

"What happens to the soul of the original owner?"

_It is forced out, though it cannot go on to the next life until the body is destroyed. _

"And here I am, fresh outta claymores. Can they be killed though?"

_Yes, but it is very difficult. They are limited by the natural lifespan of the human bodies that they inhabit._

"So they die off of old age and Walter has to summon more?"

_Yes._

"That's just sick."

_That is what he ultimately does to his torture victims once he is done with them._

"Lovely. So where to?" By then I had left the large room at the bottom of the spiral stairs and was back in the one room with the skeleton and the three doors at the one end.

_You must go through the door on the right to the room with the cells and then on to the Chancel._

I really didn't want to do through that room, but I had said that I was going to open the portal (Though I hadn't the slightest idea how.) so I pulled the door open and stepped into that repulsive room. The room was nearly completely dark, so I lit my lamp and walked slowly towards the center of the room. As soon as I reached the exact center, the room suddenly filled with shouts and screams and doors slamming open and closed as lights flashed in the cells. I dropped to the floor and huddled down and tried my best to cover my ears while I waited for it to stop. If it stopped. I could feel the angry spirits of those that Walter had killed (and maybe a few of those that Daniel and Alexander had killed.) circling around me, screaming in rage, but none attempted to attack me. Somehow I knew that Alexander was holding them back, and after what seemed like an eternity, they fell silent. I looked up to see that the room was dark and still once again, so I stood up and began to walk out, but as I neared the other door, a glint of light from the corner of the room caught my eye. Despite my misgivings I walked over to the corner and picked up a ornately done star, the same Star of the Black Eagle that Alexander had been wearing in the memory that he showed me. It was a beautifully made eight point star with a circle in the center and a black eagle wearing a crown and clutching a wreath of laurels in one claw and a scepter in another. The words _Suum Cuique_ encircled the top half of the circle, with laurels on the bottom half. I remembered that Walther had told me that Alexander had been a member of that order, so I carefully placed the star in my pocket alongside the book that I now knew had been written by Alexander in his native language. I then walked out of the room and into the chancel.

On the other side of the door, I was confronted by two flights up stairs, which I climbed up, and thought there was plenty of light, it was a greenish blue hue, being produced by flames of the same color, which I found more than a little unnerving. I found the warm yellow glow of my lamp much more comforting. By luck I spotted a jar of oil at the top of the stairs, so I cheerfully filled the lamp's reservoir completely before I moved on. At the top of the stairs there was a large set of double doors on the left that led to who knows where and didn't open anyway. Instead I went right, and my jaw fell open in shock.

The chancel was the largest room I had seen in my entire life. Even the vast spaces of the red misty room were dwarfed by the chancel's immense size. The floor and ceiling were so far below and above that they were lost out of sight in the green mist that filled the area. Ahead of me a stone bridge stretched out without any visible support to meet three other bridges in the center of the room. Following Alexander's instructions, I went straight across, bypassing the two bridges that branched off to the left and to the right respectively. The one that went to the right was partially collapsed anyway. On the other side there was a door, which I went through.

I found myself in a small room, filled with lit candles and connected by a narrow bridge to a door on the other end. A pedestal with a bowl shaped impression sat off to the left. Alexander told me that, at one time, the circular panels around the bridge rotated around it and generated a electrical field that made it impossible to cross without using an orb to draw of the power so the machinery could be stopped. Now though, the machinery was silent, and looked as though it hadn't been used in decades if not longer. I moved quickly across the bridge, through the door and down a long flight of stairs. The stairs ended in a circular room with a ceiling so high that I couldn't see it. In the center of the floor, there was a blood pool, long dried and seeped into the stone. I knelt down beside it and reached out to touch it. Before I could react, the white descended again, and I found myself a spectator in the same room.

Alexander, wearing only a torn and bloodied shirt, was lying on the floor in the center of the room, struggling weakly against Walter, who was kneeling beside him. Alexander had obviously been tortured, the burns, lashes, gashes, and puncture wounds that covered his body made that clear, and it was obvious that he was weakening rapidly.

"Tell me how to open the door, Kanael!" Walter roared angrily, as he grabbed Alexander's shirt and shook him violently. The ragged material gave way, and Alexander fell back to the floor with a cry of pain, and Walter kicked him in the side, eliciting another cry. I wanted to scream at Walter, to attack him, anything to stop what he was doing, but I was only a spectator and could only stand by and watch the events play out.

"You will let me in there!" Walter raised the wickedest looking dagger I had ever seen, and he plunged it into Alexander's stomach. Alexander screamed weakly, and Walter yanked the dagger out and stabbed the helpless old man beneath him again. Walter stabbed him twice more, and Alexander, pulling on some kind of magic or something, raised his hands and made a shoving motion. Walter went flying off of him and slammed into a nearby pillar with the noticeable sound of bone cracking on stone. Walter slumped to the floor, not quite unconscious but definitely dazed, as Alexander managed to stagger to his feet. Once he was standing it was also plain to see that he had been castrated and his manhood had been cut off as well, and the angry, hastily cauterized wounds were still seeping blood.

Alexander, crying in agonizing pain, staggered down a short hallway, and I hastened to follow him. I wanted so bad to gather him to me, and it tortured me to know that there was nothing I could do to help him. He staggered into a room with a stone altar at one end and a strange symbol drawn on the floor on the other. He staggered over to the altar, and touched something on it, and when he turned around, I could see that his hand was bleeding. He then stumbled over to the symbol on the floor and stood in it's center, though he had to lean against the wall to stay upright. Blood was streaming from the stab wounds and oozing from the others as the room filled with a blood red light, and I heard a rumbling sound.

He then stumbled back down the hallway, across the room where Walter still slumped dazed against the pillar, and down another short hallway and into a room that was identical to the one that he had been in before. Again, he pricked his hand on the altar and stood in the symbol, and this time the red light and rumbling sound was accompanied by the room shaking, and the sound of something heavy opening. He pushed himself away from the wall, but he was unable to stand any longer, and he fell to the floor. He laid there for a second, still, with only his pained breathing to show that he was still alive. I knelt down beside him and inched along with him as he slowly, painfully began to drag himself along the floor. It was what I had seen in my nightmare back home as he dragged himself down the hall, through the circular, and through the large open door opposite the stairs. I whispered encouragement to him as he crawled along, even though I knew he couldn't hear me. He left a large blood trail in his wake as he dragged himself through a small hall lined with pillars on either side of the main walkway, and he was nearly to the door on the other end when I heard Walter getting to his feet.

"Kanael!" he snarled, and I looked back to see him staggering through the door with blood running heavily down his face and neck and soaking his blond hair. I turned back to Alexander just as he reached the doors to the next area, and he reached out with one trembling hand. The doors opened at his touch, and he dragged himself through. I followed him, and Alexander had just cleared the threshold as Walter reached out to grab him, and the doors slammed shut. I heard Walter's scream of frustration, and he pounded on the doors, demanding entry, as Alexander crawled a few feet away from them before he couldn't go on any further, and he collapsed. I sat down beside him, and to my surprise, I was able to touch him. I could feel the warmth of his body as I gently smoothed his hair back from his sweaty forehead.

"It's safe now, Alexander." I said gently as he closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness "Rest now." I continued to stroke his hair, and I held one of his hands in my own as he relaxed and died.

I blinked and shook my head again to find myself back in the circular room at the base of the staircase. I knew then, what I had to do. Taking my still lit lamp, I ran down the short hallway to the first altar room. I touched the strange glass shape embedded into the altar and felt something stab me in the palm of my hand. I then went and stood in the symbol that was still visible despite a heavy layer of dust. The light turned red, and I heard the rumbling. I then ran through to the other one and did the same. I heard the door opening, and I ran back down the hall, following the dried blood stain left behind my Alexander's last desperate attempt to escape, and through the door. I ran down the hall to the double doors, and I touched my bleeding hand to them. They swung open on grating hinges, and there, lying only a few feet away, was Alexander. I ran through the door and knelt down beside him, and was surprised by what I saw.

He was not decomposed. His body was cold and lifeless, and I could plainly see all the marks of the torture that he had suffered when I gently turned him over. Even the ragged remains of his shirt had survived the ravages of time in the same condition it had been when Alexander had died nearly two centuries before.

"How can this be?" I whispered to myself, and I nearly flew out of my skin when my question was answered, and not by Alexander.

"This magic of this room is marvelous, isn't it?" I looked over my shoulder and couldn't believe what I was seeing.

"Walther?"


	9. A Reveal

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all; I only wish I did. **

**9.  
>A Reveal<strong>

"Walther?"

I couldn't believe my eyes as the man that I thought had died in the prison walked casually into the room past me and Alexander.

"Surprised to see me?" he asked ruefully, and his thick German accent was long gone. In it's place was another one, like he was not native to any language that existed on Earth, which after seeing the memories that Alexander had shown me, made perfect sense.

"Walther, Walter, such strange names you humans use." he continued, confirming my suspicions, as he walked around the large circular room, with its impossibly shaped pointed domed ceiling "Strange how you didn't catch on, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Humans had never struck me as particularly bright."

I bristled at the insult, but instead of rising to it, I sat my lamp, still burning, on the floor and gathered Alexander's lifeless form to me. He was beyond needing any protection - I could tell that his soul was still nearby, and I could feel his rage - but I was afraid that Walther, Walter, whatever in the hell his name was, would do something else to cause him harm, and I didn't want that. He had suffered enough.

Walther looked away from his perusal of the room and spared me an amused glance. "Protecting a dead man?" He looked back to the room, to the three tall pillars and the central pedestal with a dark orb sitting atop it.

"Why?" I asked; it was the only thing I could think to say.

"Why what?" he asked without looking at me. Instead his attention was focused on the orb.

"Why did you kill Alexander? Why did you bring me here? Why?"

"Why did I murder Alexander, or Kanael as I know him? It is simple. He had what I wanted. If I couldn't go home and have Kera, then no one could."

"So you were jealous? How very human of you."

Before I could blink, he had streaked across the room and was lifting me of the floor by the collar of my shirt, which forced to drop Alexander, and rage was blazing in his eyes. "Do not even compare me to your primitive species, you bitch! I am more intelligent and more powerful than your entire pathetic family combined, and my most mundane thoughts are beyond your comprehension!" He dropped me and stalked away to look at the orb again. "As to your second question," he continued, calm once more "Kanael was a devious bastard. Only he and Daniel could come into the orb chamber. He set it so their blood was required, and it had to be fresh living blood. Blood begins to die the instant it leaves the body, so the bloody smears left behind by Kanael as he crawled in here did not work. Of course, I did not figure this out until after he had died, when I read the notes that he had left on it. The blood of a relative could work as well, but before I was able to track them down, Daniel's parents and sister had died, leaving no other relatives. That, of course, left me with no choice but to track down Kanael's child, but his foster parents had taken him and fled the country. It would be many years before I was able to track down you. Once I had found you, I had to convince you to come here, which was pathetically easy once I mentioned money." He turned his head to look at me over his shoulder and sneered. "You humans really worship money, but I digress." He turned back to look at the orb again. "Once you were here, I had to get you down here, so I instructed the servants to chase you down here without harming you. If that one that attacked you hadn't bee destroyed by the wards on the back hall, I would have destroyed it myself, but that is another matter. I staged my imprisonment and death in the prison, using one of my intended vitae suppliers, so you wouldn't suspect me, but it was unnecessary, since I'm certain you didn't, am I right?"

I nodded in shock; I hadn't suspected him at all.

"I hadn't counted on Kanael's meddling as I had hoped you would never question what I had told you about him, even if it wasn't true. Of course, even after he told you everything that had happened, you still didn't suspect me. Oh yes, I watched you trek through the castle, I heard your conversations with him. You never once suspected me, even when you saw the torture rooms still in use and Kanael explained how the demons were summoned and created, your feeble human mind failed to put the facts together." He clapped his hands together, and began to make strange gestures and draw odd symbols in the air with his fingers. "And now, you have done what I wanted you to do. You have opened the orb chamber for me, so that I may return home."

_Over my dead body. _I thought angrily, and he turned back to look at me, amused.

"That can be arranged, you know." he said with a dark smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I can ensure that you spend the rest of eternity here, with your dear grandfather, but first, I think I'll make you watch my ultimate triumph while I open the portal. Once it's open, I'll take care of you properly. Now stay." He pointed at me, and suddenly, I found myself unable to move. I could breath, but all of my other muscles ignored my frantic commands, which gave me no choice to watch as Walther began a series of gestures and chants.

I called out mentally for Alexander, but when he responded, he sounded weak and distant, and I somehow knew that Walther had managed to restrain him as well, how I don't know. As Walther chanted and gestured, electricity began to spark from the tops of the columns like it had in the memory that Alexander had shown me, though it took longer to arc through the air to touch the orb. Walther laughed in delight.

"Finally!" he crowed "I can leave this cursed world and its primitives behind! Do you see Kanael? I will succeed where you had failed! I will return home, while you wander this crumbling ruin for eternity!" The bright purple light of the electricity brightened as the ropes of current to the orb thickened. The light contrasted oddly with the flickering yellow glow of my lamp.

My lamp...

I was able to move my eyes down to where the lamp sat by Alexander's head. I looked back at Walther to see him ignoring me completely as he focused on the start of the portal, so I looked back at the lamp and tried to move my hand. I wondered if this was what a quadriplegic felt like trying to move as my muscles stubbornly refused to obey the commands from my brain.

_C'mon damn it. _I silently urged myself on, hoping that Walther wasn't paying any attention to my thoughts _Just pick up the lamp!_

My finger twitched ever so slightly, and it was a good thing the rest of my muscles were still locked in place, otherwise I would have yelled in happiness and given myself away. I still let out a mental cheer, as first my fingers, and then my entire right hand began to work free of whatever Walther had done to me.

_Keep trying, Alexandra._ I heard Alexander's weak voice encouraging me, and the knowledge of how he had suffered at Walther's hands allowed me to shift my lower arm as rage flooded through me.

_C'mon, c'mon, come on! Just a little bit more! _I managed to reach out and grab the lamp, but my upper arm was still ignoring me. By then I could move my head, so either I was throwing off whatever Walther had used on me, or it was wearing off on its own. Personally I like to think it was the former and not the latter.

"Yesssss," I heard Walther hiss "Soon. Soon I will be home, and I will have my revenge on all those that wronged me, starting with that bitch, Kera. How dare she refuse me while claming that she was married! Kanael's banishment rendered their marriage void, but she still refused me! They will pay! Oh yes, the will pay!"

I heard a low moan from Alexander at Walther's threat, and another surge of anger was all I needed to free my arm completely and lift up the lamp.

"Hey Walther!" I shouted and when he turned to face me, I smirked at him - "Die as a human among us!" - and flung the burning lamp at him. It was like watching something in bullet time; the glass of the reservoir shattered on impact with his chest, and the burning wick ignited the spilling oil. In nanoseconds blazing oil splashed onto his clothes and skin, and he began to scream as he began to burn. Smoke rose off of him, and the orb chamber filled with the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh and the acrid stench of burning hair as he became a living torch. He flailed about the room, waving his arms frantically, screaming, as he tried to smother the flames without any success. Within a few seconds, he was ablaze from head to toe, and he ran out of the room past me and Alexander into the previous area. I watched him as ran down the hall and collapsed, silent, in the center of the room where he had stabbed Alexander two centuries before. The tall ceiling in that room acted like a chimney, drawing the smoke, heat and flames upward, and for a few moments, there was a small fire whirl, before the flames began to die down as they consumed their fuel. There was nothing else in the room to burn.

_Alexandra? _Alexander's voice made me tear my attention from Walther's burning corpse.

"Alexander?"

_Thank you. _I felt a cold kiss on my cheek, and I grinned widely.

"You're welcome, Opa." I replied, using the German word for "Grandpa", and for a second, I could see Alexander smiling at me, before I turned to look at the orb and the columns.

"Now what?" I asked "It looks like the ritual or whatever it was, was not disrupted, and the portal is still going to open. Are you going to go home?"

Alexander sighed. (I didn't know that ghosts could do that.) _I do not know._

"You don't know? Why don't you know? You can see your wife again if you want. Why stay here?"

_It has been a long time since I was banished. My wife my have moved on once I did not open the portal again to let her through like we had planned. _

"Do you honestly believe that?" The sadness in his voice was heartbreaking.

_I could not bear it if I found her with another, Alexandra._

"Well I still think you're worrying too much, but if you don't want to go, you can always come back with me and haunt my place. My house is old and isn't haunted. All old houses need a ghost or two to liven things up. You could bang on walls, and scare unwanted company away, and throw things at the Jehovah's Witnesses when the come knocking at an obscenely early hour of the morning."

He laughed. _And chase away any suitor that isn't worthy of you._

"Hey, now you're going to far, Opa. You can scare them away if I decide they suck. Deal?"

He laughed again. _I agree._

"Good, now that we've got that hammered out, let's get the hell out of here. The stench is getting overpowering, and I really want a hot shower, and - what the HELL!"

The portal had opened, and I could see people on the other side. One by one they came through it and appeared in the room in the opposite version of Alexander's journey into it. Four came through, and then the portal closed as the power to the orb died. One by one they stood up and looked at me, and then at Alexander's body lying on the floor beside me. All four of them looked human, but I knew that only two of them actually were human. Three of them, including a woman with long white hair, rushed towards Alexander, while the forth, one of the humans with dark brown hair and bright green eyes, walked towards me. Three other three clustered around Alexander, and I could hear them whispering in Alexander's language as the fourth reached me.

"Are you all right?" he asked gently in a British accent, and my response was to practically fall into his arms, as my eyes rolled up into my head, and I fainted.


	10. A Family

**Disclaimer: Frictional Games owns it all; I only wish I did. **

**10.  
>A Family<strong>

When I opened my eyes, I saw the ceiling of my bedroom in Brennenburg above me. Sunlight was pouring through the windows and reflecting off the floor mirror on the other side of the bed. I sat up and rubbed my face; that had to have been the most screwed up, weirdest, most vivid dream ever. What the hell had Walther slipped into the food?

I then looked at the door.

Or rather, where the door had once been. A twisted hinge that was hanging by one nail to the door frame was the only indication that a door had been there. The door was gone before one of Walther's servants had smashed it down. I held my head in my hands and groaned. It had all been real.

"Alexander?" I called out. No answer. "Alexander!" Why wasn't he answering. Had he gone through the portal after all? The thought had made my heart sink; I had grown rather attached to my Opa in such a short time, and I had really hoped that he would go home with me.

I jumped out of bed, and noted that I was still wearing my jeans and Alexander's shirt. His coat was draped over a nearby chair. I wanted to run off in search of him, but a quick sniff let me know that I needed a shower and a change of clothes, badly. Giving in to it, I took the world's quickest shower, (The presence of hot water stated clearly that the power was back in.) dressed myself in my own clothes (Though I still threw Alexander's coat on over my shirt.) and went in search of someone, anyone, that tell me what happened to Alexander.

I stepped out of the door into the hallway, and nearly fell over a person sitting in a chair outside my rooms, apparently waiting for me to wake up. He leapt up from his chair to catch me, which saved me from an unpleasant meeting with the stone floor.

"Are you all right, Miss Kesler?" he asked politely. His voice was a pleasant tenor, and I knew then who he was.

"Daniel?"

He smiled at me. "Ah, I see Alexander has told you of me, nothing bad I hope."

I managed to crack a smile at that. "No, nothing bad." He chuckled, and I asked the burning question. "Daniel, what happened to Alexander?"

He smiled again, a softer, gentler smile. "He is fine and is resting at the moment. He should wake up in another day or so."

"Oh, okay." _Of course he's fine, Alexandra._ I told myself _He's a disembodied spook. Maybe he crossed over or something or returned home. _But then that last sentence penetrated my brain.

"What do you mean 'wake up'?" I asked.

Daniel smiled at me again and offered his arm. "Maybe it would be better to show you." I nodded warily and took his arm, and he led me through the castle to Alexander's rooms. We walked into the main room to find a young man rich brown hair and hazel eyes reading a book in one of the many chairs. He looked up as we entered, and like before, I knew that he only looked human.

"Ah, Miss Kesler," he said by way of greeting "I'm glad you are back with us. It is heartening to see you up and about."

"Miss Kesler," Daniel introduced me "This is Johann Weyer, a good friend of Alexander and myself." Weyer put his book away and rose to meet me, and he took my hand and kissed it.

"It is a pleasure, my lady." he said formally.

"Charmed." I replied, trying to be polite, but at the same time, not really giving a damn. I wanted to know about Alexander. Weyer chuckled.

"You had better take her in there, Daniel." he said, sounding amused, and Daniel chuckled himself before he led me over to Alexander's bedroom door. He knocked softly on the wood, and once a voice bade him enter, he opened it quietly and ushered me in.

Two figures were on either side of the bed; one was another man that was human with golden blond hair, a beard of the same color, and grey eyes. He was standing on the right side of the bed, and on the left was the white haired woman from earlier. She was sitting in a chair, and both her and the other guy were tending to the person in that was lying in the bed, dressed in a simple white nightgown and lying tucked snugly under the blankets.

"Alexander?" I could scarcely believe my eyes, but it was true. I let go of Daniel's arm and walked up to the foot of the bed. The other two by the bed smiled warmly at me as I walked to the side and took one of Alexander's hands in my own. He was warm, and I could see the rise and fall of his chest and hear his quiet breathing. What was stranger was that he looked younger. He couldn't be called a young man by any stretch of the imagination, but it looked as though a decade had dropped off of him at least. "How is this possible?" The other four in the room looked at me - Weyer had evidently come in while I was otherwise distracted - and the blond haired guy on the other side of the bed answered.

"There are many forms of power in the universe, Alexandra. Technology is only one of them. Magic, which exists in many forms, is another. Such magic to heal terrible injuries, heal the sick, reverse and stop aging, and even to bring the dead back to life exists in Alexander's home world. There its use is strictly controlled, but here, there are no such restrictions."

"It was also the magic that saturated the orb chamber that kept his body from decomposing." I turned around to see that Weyer was speaking. "If it had rotted, there would have been nothing that we could have done. Locking himself in there to prevent Laerk from getting in saved him."

"Laerk?" I asked stupidly.

"Walter." Daniel clarified, and I nodded faintly in understanding.

On the bed, Alexander whimpered quietly and shifted under the blankets, so the woman sitting beside him, Kera, reached out and gently soothed him. He settled back down, and I asked my next question:

"How long will he be like this?"

The blond answered again. "He should wake up soon. We were able to heal the damage that Laerk had inflicted on him -"

"All of it?"

"All of it. As I was saying, he has been healed, though I doubt he'll ever be able to father another child. Right now, he is weak because his body has lain unmoving for so long, and his mind will need time to recover from the shock. He should be fine after that."

"He's going to be okay?"

"He's going to be fine."

"Now," Daniel announced "I'm going to see if I can remember where the kitchen is. I am hungry."

My stomach growled then, which elicited chuckles from everyone, including myself. "I will take you there." I offered "I'm a bit hungry myself. Does anyone else want anything?" There was a general murmur of agreement, and Kera asked for a weak broth so they could try and feed Alexander. Daniel and I then set off for the kitchen.

As we walked through the halls, Daniel filled me in on what all had happened while I was asleep. The blond bearded man was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, the famed occultist, and he was the one that Daniel had traveled through the portal with. The woman was of course, Alexander's wife. As she and Agrippa turned to bringing Alexander back from the dead, Daniel and Weyer had taken care of Walther's monstrosities, destroying their bodies and setting the souls of the original owners free.

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to hear that - no more Flappyface or Splitface!

We reached the kitchen, and even though from what he had told me about the technology being more advanced in Alexander's home world, Daniel was still awestruck by the kitchen. That awe only increased when I told him that the appliances were at least 20 years out of date. After he had burned himself on the stove no less than four times, I banished him to the kitchen table, while I cooked up a simple meal of soup and sandwiches and heated up the broth for Alexander. Daniel then helped me load it up on a serving cart and wheel it back to Alexander's rooms.

As we walked into the main room and began laying out the food on a table that someone had cleared, Agrippa walked in from the bedroom and asked Daniel.

"Did you spend several minutes throwing things into the acid this time, Daniel?"

Daniel blushed and mumbled something I couldn't make out, while Agrippa and Weyer laughed.

"There's a story there, somewhere; I know it." I said "So spill, Daniel."

Daniel blushed again. "I'll gladly tell you, but I'm sure that Alexander must be fed first." He picked up the broth and carried it into the bedroom. Through the open door, I watched as he handed the bowl to Kera and then he sat down on the bed and carefully pulled Alexander into a sitting position and supported him so Kera could carefully trickle the broth a spoonful at a time into his mouth.

"He will be all right." Agrippa said gently from behind me "He needs only to rest for now. For now, come and eat. You must be famished after last night." There was no denying that, so I joined him and Weyer at the table, and they regaled with stories of the other world that they lived in while we ate. After a bit Daniel joined us, and it was then that I was told about the acid barrel in the prison's kitchen. Apparently, upon learning that the acid would spit out anything that it couldn't dissolve (like glass) Daniel spent several minutes by the barrel, throwing whatever he could find into it and watching it either dissolve or being thrown out. The best part was he giggled like a school girl the entire time. Alexander had set the barrel up for an experiment and not only did he have to get more acid since it had been contaminated, he practically had to drag Daniel away from it by the ear.

Once that amusing story was told, they told me the more serious one of how Daniel and Agrippa ended up entering the portal. History records that Agrippa died in 1534, when in reality, he was living in Brennenburg at the time with Alexander, along with Weyer. Weyer, as I suspected, was not human and his parents, like Alexander had been banished to this world before the birth of Weyer and his siblings. After Agrippa found an orb, he, Weyer, and Alexander managed to use it to open a portal. Weyer went through, willingly leaving his human wife and their grown children behind. As far as history is concerned, Weyer fell ill and died, and the churchyard where he was supposedly buried was later obliterated. Agrippa and Alexander were planning to reopen the portal again, but once it began to close, the orb shattered into six large pieces, ruining their plans.

Some time later, Agrippa sickened, and while Alexander was able to keep him alive for a while using his own magic, he couldn't hold off death forever, and he knew it. To keep Agrippa from passing on, he did some kind of ritual to prevent his soul from leaving the dying husk, while still allowing him to communicate. At first, he kept Agrippa in the upper part of the castle, in a guest room, but to prevent the servants from seeing him (and freaking out) he moved him down to the nave and to that little candle lined, spike guarded space I had seen earlier. The spikes were to prevent any wandering people from reaching him if they did find him, as most wouldn't have been able to climb over them without getting gored.

In 1839 Alexander received a letter from Daniel, begging for help. He had discovered an orb in a tomb in Algeria, and not long after its discovery, he had been sent home, taking the orb with him. Not long after he made it home to London, something had attacked the rest of the expedition, killing everyone left behind. That something then began stalking Daniel, killing everyone he came into close contact with. To make a long story short, Alexander invited him to Brennenburg, and showed him how to hold back the orb's mysterious guardian, which was simply know as the Shadow. Ritualistic sacrifice was the preferred method. Anyway, using Daniel's orb, they were able to open another portal, and this time Alexander allowed Daniel to pass through, taking Agrippa with him. (That procedure involved some kind of potion and sawing the head off the dead husk that Agrippa was stuck in. I didn't ask for details.) Once on the other side of the portal, it was a simple matter to create him a new body. The husk that had been left behind was the source of the bones I had found in the nave.

After we had eaten I was shocked to look out a window and learn that it was nearly sundown. After checking on Alexander one final time, Agrippa departed for the guest room that he had once occupied all those years ago. Daniel and Weyer did the same, leaving only myself and Kera with Alexander. I seated myself in a chair on the other side of his bed from her and asked a question that had been bothering me since I realized who she was:

"Are you angry?"

She looked at me, and I noticed that she had aged herself up to match him. She had also changed her eyes to the same dark brown as his. "Why would I be angry?'

"Because he was with another woman and had a child with her."

"No, I'm not angry with him. Expecting him to keep it to himself for so long would be too much to ask for anyone. It was a one time event, and it was just happenstance that a child was conceived. I've waited too long to be with him again to throw it away over a regret."

"Are the two of you going to return home?"

"This is our home now. His banishment was overturned long ago, but neither of us wish to return to a society that condemned him so readily on a false charge."

"What was the charge that they slapped him with?"

"Laerk was the leader of the region in which we lived. He was our.. king to use the human word. He had a few friends beat him and then swore that Kanael did it. No one gave Kanael as chance to explain or defend himself. Much later, after Kanael had been gone for years, one of those friends confessed to what he had done, but it wouldn't be until Agrippa, Weyer, and Daniel worked together that we were able to get the banishment reversed. No, I do not want to go back there." Alexander shifted again, and we both spent a moment soothing him, before she looked back up at me.

"Go get some rest, child." she said gently "He will still be here in the morning." She reached out and patted my hand, and I leaned over and kissed Alexander on the side of his head, which caused him to smile in his sleep, before I got up from my chair and walked out of the room.

In the hallway, I nearly fell over Daniel again, who had again been waiting for me.

"We have to stop meeting like this." I mumbled as it hit me just how tired I was "What will people think?" He flashed an award winning smile at me and offered his arm.

"Would you like me to escort you back to your rooms?" he asked, and I nodded gratefully. It wasn't necessary, but it was a nice gesture. As we walked, he told me of the mischief the Shadow had gotten into once it had tracked him to Brennenburg, which included and not limited to: flooding the cellar archives (Hence the evidence of water damage I had seen earlier.), tearing down centuries old trees in the forest, and crashing the elevator - while Daniel and Alexander were in it. They had been bruised but unhurt in the accident, but Daniel had never heard Alexander curse so much at once before. Repairs had taken several days, and Alexander had been so furious, since he had been mighty proud of being of the few to own an private elevator at the time. The two of us chuckled at the stories as Daniel walked me to my rooms and bade me goodnight, and then he walked away, seeking his own bed. I watched him (by the light of electric lights! Yay!) until he had vanished around the corner. Only then did I go to bed myself.

I was awoken in the morning by Daniel knocking on the door. I dragged myself out of bed and answered it to see him standing there with his eyes bright with excitement.

"Alexander's awake." was all he had to say to make me fly out of the room light one of Walther's monsters was on my ass.

I burst into Alexander's room to see Agrippa and Weyer sitting in the main room, and they both smiled at me as I ran past them to the bedroom. Alexander was sitting up in bed, propped up on pillows, and Kera was beside him, holding his hand and talking to him. Alexander looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, and I can't describe how thrilled I was when he smiled at me.

"Alexandra," he said, and his voice was so weak, nowhere near the rich baritone that I had heard through my trek through the castle, but I still recognized it. He held out his arms, and Kera excused herself as I ran forward, sat on the bed, and wrapped my arms around him. I felt his arms encircle me, and I held him tight, still a little shocked that he was there, in my arms, and that he was warm and living instead of cold and lifeless.

After a few minutes, I felt his grip slackening, so I let go and eased him back against his pillows. He smiled at me again, and I couldn't keep the stupid grin off of my face for nothing.

"Don't cry, _meine enkelin_." he said quietly, and he reached up with on shaking hand and wiped a tear off my face. When had I started crying? And "meine enkelin" is German for... "my granddaughter". I managed a watery laugh and hugged him again, which made him chuckle. Once I had released him and laid him back against his pillows, he asked me something that made me quit grinning instantly.

"What will you do now, Alexandra?" I frowned thoughtfully; I hadn't thought that far yet.

"I don't know." I admitted "I still have three or four days left before I have to be back at work, but I really haven't thought about it yet."

"Have you thought about staying here?"

I sighed. "Honestly Opa, I can't. I have a job, friends, and a house back in South Dakota. I love Brennenburg castle, but I can't keep it. It was always my intention to sell the property and go home."

He cast his eyes down to look at his blankets." I see. I can understand why you would do that. This is not your home, is it?"

"Can't you stay here?"

"No, I cannot. Alexander von der Brennenburg vanished nearly two centuries ago, and you are the only descendant left. It would be impossible to explain if I were to appear and try to claim the castle as mine."

"Then you'll come home with me. You and Kera both." Alexander blinked at me in surprise, and I kept talking. "Hey I have friends and coworkers, but it would be nice to have family again. We can fix up my house and live happily ever after. Daniel can come too, if he wants."

"What of Agrippa and Weyer?"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've had the impression that they're not staying. Am I right?"

He nodded. "You are right. They'll be leaving as soon as they judge me well enough." He looked up at me. "What will you do with the contents of the castle?"

"Well we could always go through it and pick out things to keep. The rest we could sell or something, I guess."

"It would be terrible for the castle to be destroyed."

"It would, but the property taxes would eat me alive, Opa, and the German government would seize it for taxes owed within a year or two."

Alexander nodded, sadly. "Hey," I said gently "it's the people that make it a home, right?" He smiled weakly and nodded, and I hugged him again. He chuckled and returned the gesture and whispered in my ear.

"Thank you, _meine enkelin_."

**OOOOOO**

Two days after Alexander was awoken, Daniel and I were out in the carriage house/garage to the side of the castle, which gave us a clear view of the drive. I heard the unmistakable sound of a car engine and looked up to see a car coming towards the castle, and I told Daniel to run back into the castle and make himself scarce. The world he had been living in had technology that outstripped ours in some areas, in other areas they were way behind us. Despite having them explained multiple times, Daniel still had a little trouble with the concepts of cell phones, four wheeled vehicles, computers. and television.

Daniel went out the back of the carriage house, so not to be seen, and I knew that he would go to Alexander's room to warn the others. I then walked up to the front steps to greet whomever. A tall gentleman wearing an expensive suit and carrying a briefcase stepped out of the car and said something to the driver in German (Telling him to wait, I presume.) before he approached me.

"Might you be Ms. Alexandra Kesler?" he inquired politely in English, and I nodded.

"I am. May I ask who you are?"

"Forgive me. I am Gustav Kappal of Schuster and Kappal Law firm. I am pleased to see that you received our letter, though I expected you to contact us before traveling here. Is there a place where we may sit down and discuss things?"

I nodded again and led him inside the castle to one of the small study rooms in the archives. Once we were seated he opened his briefcase and began pulling out papers and setting them on the table in front of me. I noticed that several of them had the law firm's seal on them, and that they did not match the seal on the letter I had received at all. I frowned for a moment, which was not noticed by Kappal since he was busy getting papers out of his briefcase. The seal on the letter I had read that been a black eagle holding a wreath in one hand and a scepter in the other...

That sneaky bastard. Evidently, Walther had let the law firm do the leg work, and once they had found me, he somehow stopped their letters and sent his own, using the Star of the Order of the Black Eagle as the seal. I had to admit, it was a clever move on his part. Kappal started to speak, so I focused my attention on him.

"We have been searching for you for quite a while, Ms Kesler." he said "We at first did not think that Freiherr von der Brennenburg had any children, but we were contacted by a unknown person who informed us that he had fathered a son and then sent that son away to live with foster parents. We couldn't identify this person, but they proved to be accurate, and the paper trail did the rest. We sent out several letters, but none of them seemed to reach you. I was about to travel to the United States to meet you in person, when I learned that you had already come here."

"What exactly do you need to speak to my about, Herr Kappal?"

"The estate has been in flux since Freiherr von der Brennenburg vanished all those years ago. Caretakers for the castle as well as the property taxes have been taken out of the sizable fortune that he left behind, but the money has begun to run low. We needed to find someone that could lay a legal claim on the castle. If that failed, the property would have been auctioned off and likely condemned. Once we are able to prove that you are indeed the descendant of the Freiherr, you can claim the property and the estate and do with it what you will. You can live here, sell it, burn it to the ground if you wish."

"Who would want to buy this place?" I asked with one eyebrow raised "It certainly is a beautiful castle, and I would hate to see it destroyed, but it is old and has been poorly maintained. Whoever bought it would need to spend lots of money to fix it before they could do anything else."

"That is true, Ms. Kesler, but there are those that would do so, simply to have the privilege of living in such a storied structure."

I nodded in agreement. "That is true, very true. Tell me, how much exactly, of the estate is left?"

He shuffled through some papers and quoted me a rough estimate. No, there wasn't much left, but it would more than enough to do what I needed to do.

"Herr Kappal, I know from reading books and watching TV shows that this part of Germany is very popular with vacationers and tourists, am I right?"

"You are right, yes."

"Then I have an idea. Do you think it would work if..." I leaned towards him and began to tell him my idea.

**OOOOOO**

The beautifully haunting melody of Michael Nyman's "The Promise" drifted through the kitchen as I stood in front of the stove in the newly remodeled kitchen, showing Kera the finer points of cooking. A new roof and new windows kept the out the freezing rain that was falling outside, and a new furnace kept the house comfortably toasty, while an extension to the house made sure there was room for everyone. Daniel was seated in the next room at the well worn, lovingly cared for, century and a half old dinging room table, studying from one of his books. It had taken some doing, including him taking some day classes to get his education up to snuff, but he was strangely enough going to school so he could go back to work as an archeologist.

We all had a good laugh when Alexander told him completely deadpan not to touch any orbs he came across this time. No one mentioned the hidden orb chamber that had been added to the house's cellar, where Daniel's orb currently resided, safe from anyone that would want to mess with it.

As for Alexander, he was at the piano in the living room. The piano was one of many things that he had taken from the castle when we left. Alexander claimed it had a deeper, richer sound than modern pianos, and after listening to him play a few times, I had to agree. He head learned to play, he said, because it was the only thing that allowed him to cope with his loneliness for all those years.

With a little help from Agrippa and Weyer before the latter two departed, we had created the documentation to allow Daniel, Alexander, and Kera to live in this world with no troubles, along with the background information to back it up. As far as everyone was concerned, Alexander and Kera were my granduncle and aunt, and there was no one left alive to say otherwise. Daniel was being passed off as their unofficially adopted son, though we did have to scramble to explain his London accent.

Castle Brennenburg had been sold to a wealthy group that wanted to restore it and turn it into a hotel. (We sealed off and hid all entrances to the prison areas and lower, just to be safe.) Not only did I get a nice chunk of money out of the deal, (Which I use to fix up the house.) but they had offered us free stays whenever we felt like it. It was due to open in a couple years, and I was thinking about attending the opening ceremony, and Daniel had said he would go if I did.

Alexander, on the other hand, was reluctant to.

"I rebuilt Brennenburg," he said "restoring it after it had been gutted by a fire. I chose the materials with my own hands. There was nothing about that castle that I did not know, and I loved it almost like one would love a child. But almost all of my memories of it are sad ones. Memories of being alone and miserable, of being frightened. I was tortured and murdered in that castle and trapped there for many years. One day, I may go back, but I cannot now." He had fallen silent then, and Kera had held him close for a while before he had gone over to the piano.

"Well at least they won't have to worry about the ghosts or anything." Daniel said, which made me look up from the stove. He was right. One of the last things Agrippa and Weyer had done before they left was to perform a cleansing ceremony, which freed the trapped souls, chased out the bad ones, and just made the entire castle seem.. lighter. It was a nice change and only after it was done did I realize how dark the castle was.

"It looks like it's done." Kera said, and I looked back at the pot of chicken and rice stew we were cooking, the perfect thing for a cold winter's day. (Kera hated winter already; Alexander was used to them.)

"I believe it is." I agreed, and I turned off the burner. "Daniel, would you might setting the table?"

He closed his book and put it aside. "Not at all." He opened my great grandmothers china cabinet and began pulling out bowls and bread plates. I carried the soup to the table and sat it down on the cast iron piece that kept the hot pot from touching the table and scorching the wood, while Kera followed with the pitcher of iced tea and four glasses. (Daniel had scoffed at the idea of drinking tea cold at first, but he was soon addicted to it.)

As "The Promise" reached it's end, I called out "Alexander, dinner!" The final notes died away, and I soon heard the creaking on the well worn wooden floor as Alexander walked in. As everyone sat down, I thought about how shocked my coworkers had been when they asked if I brought any souvenirs home and I introduced my new family instead. It still can make me laugh just thinking about it.

On my left Daniel flashed me a smile, and when I returned it, he blushed a little and looked down at his soup, which caused me to blush and look away. On the other side of the table, Alexander snickered and Kera gave us a knowing smile.

"Don't say it." I interrupted before she could say what I know she had been planning to say. I looked over at Alexander. "And you. Don't go all fatherly and start threatening him." Alexander looked disappointed for a second, before I added: "If he does something stupid, I'll deal with it myself." Alexander suddenly looked like Christmas had come early, while Daniel groaned beside me.

"I am in so much trouble." he grumbled, and I laughed and patted him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, Daniel." I said "I won't hurt you... much."

The other two at the table started laughing as Daniel asked plaintively; "Can we eat now?"

The sound of laughter filled the room as everyone, including Daniel, joined in on the mirth, and the once silent house was again filled by the sound of family.


End file.
